#249 MrBallen - Ouija Boards, Aliens Hijacking an Aircraft and Real-Life Horror Stories

John B. Allen, known as MrBallen, is a former U. S. Navy SEAL, and storyteller specializing in strange, dark, and mysterious true stories. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Allen served as a Navy SEAL from 2010 to 2017, completing multiple deployments including to Afghanistan, where he was wounded and medically retired. Launching his content career in 2020 on TikTok and YouTube as a form of therapy, he quickly amassed millions of followers with his engaging narratives of true crime, mysteries, and the unexplained, becoming one of YouTube's biggest storytellers. Founder of Ballen Studios, he hosts the top-rated MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories and has authored graphic novels like MrBallen Presents: Strange, Dark & Mysterious: The Graphic Stories (2024) and Where Nightmares Live (2025). Through the MrBallen Foundation, established in 2022, he honors victims of violent crimes and supports their families with education, training, and financial aid. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://tryarmra.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS ⁠https://shopify.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://simplisafe.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://tractorsupply.com/hometownheroes⁠ ⁠https://USCCA.com/srs⁠ ⁠⁠https://americanfinancing.net/srs⁠⁠ NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900, for details about credit costs and terms. John B. Allen Links: Website - https://ballenstudios.com YT - https://www.youtube.com/@MrBallen X - https://x.com/mrballen IG - https://www.instagram.com/mrballen TT - https://www.tiktok.com/@mrballen FB - https://www.facebook.com/mrballen Podcast - https://ballenstudios.com/shows/mrballen-podcast-strange-dark-mysterious-stories MrBallen Foundation - https://mrballen.foundation Amazon Author Page - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0D98RD8HH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:06Shawn Ryan?

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• 0:25Speaker 01

  Hi, I, uh...

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Let's get you a basket.

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Mr. Ballen, welcome back, man.

• 1:08Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, dude.

• 1:09Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, good to see you.

• 1:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, man, so I'm in your new, your new, well, it looks sort of the same, but it's upgraded, a new compound, new studio.

• 1:17Shawn Ryan?

  New color.

• 1:18Speaker 05

  I was at the attic the last time.

• 1:19Shawn Ryan?

  Purple.

• 1:20Speaker 05

  It is purple, yeah. It looks sort of dark, but it's purple. But dude, it's so beautiful. This compound is amazing.

• 1:26Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, man. Well, it's, uh, I've been super excited to show you, so...

• 1:32Speaker 05

  It looks, it looks epic, dude. I've heard, I've heard good things and it lived up to it, man.

• 1:36Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, thank you. Well, man, I'm pumped, dude. You've got, you've got a lot of good stuff going on now, but I thought it would be a really good idea, you know, to get you in here right before Halloween, get some Halloween content. We're the best storytellers in the world. So, but um, but yeah, man, I'm just pumped to see it. It's been, it's been what? Probably about a year.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, the last time we were here, we were in the attic and you were talking about coming to this place at the time. But I remember we, we arrived and like sprinted to the, to the studio. We recorded and I, I went right back. It was like such a whirlwind, but uh, that was a great experience, man. I'm good to be back here, man.

• 2:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So, uh, just a quick, quick introduction, not that you need one, but um, former Navy SEAL turned master storyteller captivating millions with tales of the strange, dark and mysterious. You've got over 10 million YouTube subs. Wow, dude. Uh, creator of the wildly popular Mr. Ballin podcast, which has redefined storytelling. A New York Times bestselling author. That's new since the last time. With your first graphic novel hitting the top of the charts and the second one, Where Nightmares Live, fresh off the press. You just sent me that. Thank you.

• 2:56Shawn Ryan?

  An innovator in content creation, launching new formats like Storytime with Mr. Ballin on YouTube. A trailblazer in the podcast world, earning consideration for a Golden Globe nomination.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  You too, dude.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  You as well. We both almost got nominated.

• 3:13Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't that fucking wild?

• 3:15Speaker 05

  Dude, it's crazy.

• 3:15Shawn Ryan?

  Did you ever, did you ever?

• 3:17Speaker 05

  No, all the awards that like we get, it's, people don't know this, but you shamelessly put in for your own award. So I should win this award, you know, this is the first time that they're like, we've, we've designated you could win this award. That was cool.

• 3:31Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know that was coming?

• 3:33Speaker 05

  No, I had no, I saw your name and I saw our podcast and I was like, that's amazing. Cause I had no idea.

• 3:40Shawn Ryan?

  Two SEALs.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  Look at that dude, just carving our own path post-service, dude.

• 3:44Shawn Ryan?

  Love it. Love it. I love it. Are you going? Are you gonna go?

• 3:48Speaker 05

  I guess, I think that they're gonna nominate like six. So there's 25 of us, 25 shows. And I think it's like six get nominated and then obviously one wins. Pretty sick to get nominated, show up in like a flannel tuxedo or something. Red carpet.

• 4:04Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, dude, but I would definitely go to that.

• 4:06Shawn Ryan?

  That blew me. I had no idea that, uh, I think this is the first year they're even doing podcasts. And I was like, holy shit.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  Look at us, dude, mainstream.

• 4:15Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's cra- it feels like totally insane.

• 4:18Shawn Ryan?

  Well, if I see you there, I'll see you there, hopefully. But, all right, let's get, so we're gonna do some story time, some updates with you, but first, you know, everybody gets a gift. Usually give the gummy bears. I'm gonna switch it up. We got these, you're gonna like these, dude. And we got our campfire session tonight.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, dude. What is this?

• 4:37Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance leads more bites.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Dude, all right, let me show the camera. There's like 700 cameras to show.

• 4:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Dude, you gotta try those.

• 4:46Speaker 05

  I got the gummy bears last time. Those were excellent. I smashed them immediately.

• 4:50Shawn Ryan?

  I got you another thing, too.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I can see.

• 4:52Shawn Ryan?

  Last time, I didn't get to do this, cuz, you know, we were in a hurry, but I think you'll enjoy this one. So I got a buddy over at Sig, his name's Jason.

• 5:03Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 5:03Shawn Ryan?

  Huge fan of yours. I think you're gonna like. You got any guesses?

• 5:08Speaker 05

  Uh, I think I can guess. Well, Sig action, dude. Thank you so much.

• 5:13Shawn Ryan?

  You know what that is?

• 5:14Speaker 05

  That's Sig 226.

• 5:16Shawn Ryan?

  That is the updated Sig 226X Legion.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  This is friggin' beautiful, man. Thank you.

• 5:25Shawn Ryan?

  You like it?

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, dude. I actually, I've been meaning to get a 226, cuz that, that's what we shot in the teams, obviously. I think they went to a Glock now. I don't know, but in the teams, it was a P226. Dude, this is beautiful. Is this even out yet? Is this like the newest thing?

• 5:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's out. It's, I think it is the newest. I don't know.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  This is, uh... It's out.

• 5:45Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know. Sig cranks a lot of guns out, but...

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Dude, thank you so much, man.

• 5:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man, you're welcome.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Holy cow, man.

• 5:52Shawn Ryan?

  We'll have to, uh, break that thing in on the break.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  Hell, yeah, dude. Thank you so much.

• 5:56Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  I have a, a much lamer gift for you.

• 6:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I love gifts.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  It's not a, a sick pistol, but here you go.

• 6:09Shawn Ryan?

  What do we got here?

• 6:15Shawn Ryan?

  Definitely some clothing in there.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  There you go dude.

• 6:17Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe a boot. I don't know.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  I think you already got the book. But it's the new book.

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  Signed in the inside there.

• 6:24Shawn Ryan?

  Where nightmares live.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Yup. The new anthology.

• 6:27Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, I love this man. Like this comics.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah dude, it's, that's, that's a, that's a labor of love for sure. Put those together.

• 6:35Shawn Ryan?

  Very cool.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  Yup. And then the flannel.

• 6:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 6:38Speaker 05

  The flannel. So, so I gotta give you the, I don't know if you, if you, if you dabble in flannels, I obviously do. And this, I'm not sponsored in any way by this brand, but Farady brand, which you may have already heard about.

• 6:51Shawn Ryan?

  I know about these guys.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  They make the best flannels. And that to me, and if you see, I got you your own color there. So it's not like, I'm not giving you like the red one where I wear. You can, you can wear that in real life. It's just normal.

• 7:04Shawn Ryan?

  You can wear that in real life. Dude, this is nice. Thank you man.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  And they don't wrinkle. You just throw them in a bag.

• 7:12Shawn Ryan?

  Love it.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  You know? So there you go. It's like, it's pretty equal to a sick P226.

• 7:17Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, hey.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  No, this is, this is gorgeous man. Thank you so much.

• 7:22Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. You're welcome.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  That's, that's nuts man. You know, actually, I haven't shot since 2017. Like I got out of the teams. I got out of the teams in 2017.

• 7:33Shawn Ryan?

  That's like eight years. You haven't shot a gun?

• 7:35Speaker 05

  No.

• 7:36Shawn Ryan?

  Are you anti-gun now?

• 7:37Speaker 05

  No. I just have not.

• 7:38Shawn Ryan?

  It's okay.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  No, I'm not. I just have not shot. So I got out and I like dove into like entrepreneurship, you know? And like, that's all I wanted. Cause for me, my, my story is like, I got medically retired in 2017, but my, the timeline was shifted pretty aggressively. It was like, hey, you know, you're gonna get medically retired in part because of the injury I sustained in Afghanistan. I had some mental stuff going on and they're like, yup, you're, you're gonna get med boarded out. But they gave me, I want to say it was like over a year was my expected like this is when you'll leave the military by date. But it just got moved way, way up really quickly. Still got medically retired. And so in that, so for the folks who don't know, you get, you get a retirement check.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  You leave and you have some level of income, but it's, it wasn't a lot. And so I was suddenly out with kids and a wife and like no plan. I, I was like, oh, in a year I'll figure it out when I get out. Cause my retirement date's over there. I'll figure it out. And so when I got out, I, I had to like, you know, find a job and it was sort of ironic. And in my effort to find a job for myself, I began like networking a lot and like meeting people in the city and like, in New York. And I ended up sort of putting together these networking events with the help of this guy, Jordan, who I met in the city. He's a former investment banker, not, not a veteran, he's a civilian. And we put together these amazing networking events that were actually for me to like meet employers and like get a job.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  But we brought other veterans to these events. We brought other employers and everyone's like, wow, what a great service this is. And nobody was approaching me to get a job because they're like, oh, this is his job. He runs this like networking event and I ended up doing that. Like shit. And so I, I created a job that helped other people get jobs. And then shortly after that, I got into the Mr. Mullen thing. And honestly, dude, it's just, this is our critical part of this. I sleepwalk like a maniac. And so my wife has always been like, I'm worried that you're going to like shoot me. And so like in that, well, don't worry, I have a place to keep this. I've been thinking about it. And so she has been anti-gun. It because I, did I tell you about my prolific sleepwalking? I think you did.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  I have. So this is according to chat GPT. So this is not a true diagnosis, but I've gone to sleep studies. I've asked, I mean, I've, I've seen sleep doctors and, and no one can figure out what's going on. Basically I go to bed and within about 30 minutes of falling asleep, I am up. This is most nights. This is mo- the majority of nights. Okay, that's probably a stretch. It's at least two or three times a week, at least. I wake up. And I'm in this half stoop, I sleep by myself. I have alarms set to the room that I sleep in. That Antonio is here, who's my security guy, he sets special alarms on the doors that lead out of the house from my room.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  So if I bolt in at night, he's alerted to it. And so I jump out of bed and I start running screaming, what the fuck is going on?

• 10:36Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 10:38Speaker 05

  Dude, it's like, it's crazy. And so to me, it's so normal that I'm like, oh, like I've been doing, I was doing this in the teams. Like in Afghanistan, I was doing this, but like, I don't know how I got in.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  But like, so I get out of the military and that was the one thing my wife was like, you can't have a gun in the house. You're gonna like do something crazy with it. So it's a combination of get out, full civilian, full entrepreneur. But it's funny, I was actually gonna say to you, like, it's the one thing that I have let completely fall off is just shooting. And like, that's, I was gonna ask you, like, how often are you shooting? Like, is this like a thing you do every day? Cause I feel like I wanna reincorporate shooting into my life, because it's just something that I haven't done since 2017.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll start that today.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Dude, I'm probably the fucking worst shot ever right now, but I wanna get back into it.

• 11:24Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not any good either. In fact, I don't, I don't really, I love shooting guns, but what I really, I'm not really into like all the shit we used to carry in the SEAL teams, you know what I mean? I think ARs and like, but it's all good. I like them, but what I really like now is like the old western shit, like revolvers and lever actions.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 11:46Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, it's, it's a lot of fun.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  That's awesome.

• 11:49Shawn Ryan?

  But yeah, but I mean, but also like, yeah, I mean, when I left, you know what I mean? And started, you know, my entrepreneur journey, you know, I was in, it started with tactics.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  I remember watching videos of you out in the forest, talking about your everyday carry that were going like super viral.

• 12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. So I had to shoot for that. And then, and then when I, you know, got tired of that shit, started the podcast. It, it kinda fell off until, well, it didn't kinda fell off, it fell off. But then we moved here, you know, and we got a shooting range right off the patio here, so.

• 12:27Shawn Ryan?

  But I'm still pretty rusty.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, like, I remember in the teams, there were dudes that just like what they did is they like really kept dialed in and you can just see it when a dude's shooting a lot. It's just they're so on point. They're so good. And for me, I was like, I was good enough to pass the test because I was a team guy, you know? But I didn't have that like desire to like really become a great shot. I think I was like very average, if not below, but enough for the teams. And now it's like, it became this daunting task over time. Then like, well, if I want to get back into it. I gotta do it like discreetly too. I can't like go to an instructor, but you're a former Navy SEAL. I gotta learn how to shoot again. So I was gonna ask you like, oh, I wanna shoot with you.

• 13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, dude.

• 13:07Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll do that on the break, but dude, Halloween's right around the corner.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Last year, we brought on an exorcist who was awesome, but you are, you are the storyteller. So what, let's hear a story that, that, that, that you think goes along with Halloween, something that's gonna scare the shit out of people.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, actually, there's, I was thinking about it. So I knew coming here, that was a big part of this is having some stories. And I would say this story I'm gonna tell you is. So I did it actually on the live tour. I don't think you heard this one, though. This one was added in.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Gets a big reaction from the crowd. So I've told this in front of, you know, thousands of people and this one just. It's a good, it's a great story. It's a great story. It's a fucking horrible story, but it is, it is a great story.

• 13:58Shawn Ryan?

  It's a fucking horrible story, but it's a great.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  Alright, so in 1986, there's this family, the- Is this real? This is totally real. This is legit? Totally real, yes. There's this guy named Frank, and he's got two daughters. He has an older daughter, this is 1986, this is in Pepperell, Massachusetts, so it's, I mean, it's Western Mass. He's got two daughters. He's got a 15-year-old daughter named Tina, and a nine-year-old daughter named Karen. And, uh, this is in, again, the fall of 86, and around this timeframe, this family, the Bowen's family, they had suffered this really awful loss. So Frank's wife and the two daughters' mother had passed away pretty unexpectedly from, from cancer. So she came on suddenly, she passed away, and it was, it was this horrible thing.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  And so, this has happened within a few months of, of when the story picks up in the fall of 86. Um, however, the, part of the, the dynamic here is that the wife, the mother, had been, you know, a working mom, and her income had been meaningful to the household. So the, the blue-collar family, you know, Frank and his wife's income were how they flowed to the family. And so when she passed, not only is there, you know, all this grief in the household, you know, of course, but there's also like a practical issue. You know, Frank now was, 50% of the income is gone, and he needs to find a way to, to provide for his family. And so, in the immediate aftermath of her passing, Frank began taking all these extra

• 16:28Speaker 05

  shifts at work, just to make ends meet. You know, just sort of what he had to do, but as, as a product, or a product of that, was that Tina and Karen, who were sort of just old enough for this to be okay, they, as they're dealing with this incredible grief of losing- Taking late shifts at work. Um, but they accepted this, you know, it is, it is what it is, you know, their dad loves them, and he's just trying to do the, the right thing for the family. So, with that as the backdrop, uh, there was this night, uh, where Frank was out at doing one of these late shifts. This is again, sometime in like September of 86, and the girls are home. And the girls, they, they're so, the death of their mom is so new in some ways that

• 17:11Speaker 05

  they, they haven't quite moved to the point of acceptance. They still almost feel like mom's gonna come around the corner. Like, it just feels unreal that she's gone. And they, they just felt desperately that they just wanted to have one more interaction with their mom. They just, it's like they felt it in their bones. They just missed her so badly. And so with their dad gone for the night, the older girl, Tina, the 15-year-old, she asked the younger girl, Karen, "Hey, do you wanna get the Ouija board out and, and try to contact mom?" So for those who don't know what a Ouija board is- This is never a good idea. Yeah, you know, a Ouija board, it, it looks sort of like just a rectangular game board, and it has A through Z on it, A, B, C, D, all the letters, the alphabet. It

• 17:56Speaker 05

  has zero, you know, up to nine, all the digits. And you put this, it's called a planchette. It's like this little dial that has felt tips, three prongs, felt tips that it sits on. And it's got a little viewfinder in the top of it that you can look through. It's like a little looking glass down onto the board. And when you use the Ouija board, if you believe that this thing works, you know, you and whoever else, let's take Tina and Karen in this instance, they would rest their fingertips, they'd typically sit on opposite sides of the board, they'd rest their fingertips on the edge of this planchette. And the idea is, you don't move the planchette at all. You just like rest your fingers on the planchette. And if there's, you know, spirits in the room, the idea is they will,

• 18:39Speaker 05

  you, you ask a question with your fingers, Tina or Karen asks a question, you know, "Hey, mom, are you here?" You know, their fingers are on the planchette. And if there's a spirit in the room, the idea is they will travel through your body and they'll manipulate your fingertips and they'll move the planchette around. Part of the reason why Ouija boards have become so popular is it's so easy, if there's a group of you, to be the one person that sort of subtly moves the planchette and give the impression that like there's a ghost in the room. So, it is what it is. If you believe it or you don't, people say that, you know, Ouija boards are a way to talk to the dead. What do you believe? I, I don't know. I don't know if the Ouija board works. I think that there is- You tried one? I have tried, yeah. No shit? Where'd you try it? So we had one, uh, growing up. My sisters and I would, would always get out the Ouija board. And now that I'm thinking about it, that's kinda weird. Like littles.

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Me and my like sisters as the young children are like having seances in our basement. Uh, so actually I give, I'm, I'm open to it. I'm open to it. So anyways, these two, they're like, okay, you know, we wanna, we wanna try to contact mom. And so they, they get their Ouija board and their little planchette and they go down into the basement and they literally set up like a seance. You know, the basement is just like this blank slab basement. There's a washer dryer. There's a couple of tools on a shelf, but it's a blank, you know, concrete slab basement. Um, and they put their, their Ouija board down. They light some candles and they sit down and they put their fingers on the planchette and they begin asking questions like sort of to the room, you know, hey mom, you know, if you're in here, you know, give us a sign, you know, and they look at the

• 20:11Speaker 05

  board and they're, they're hoping it's gonna move, but you know, nothing happens. And over the course of the next hour, these girls tried every combination of question that they could ask, you know, to try to inspire the, the spirit of their mother to, to come in here and talk to them. Um, but no matter what they did, they just, they couldn't get the planchette to move. And in some ways it was sort of devastating, you know, they, again, they're, they're grieving the loss of their mom. They haven't really come to terms with it and this felt like hope, you know, mom's gonna come through. We know it. She loves us, but, but nothing happens. And so they end up, you know, packaging up the, the Ouija board and they go back upstairs and they go up to the second floor where their bedrooms are. And by this point, their dad, Frank, he's still at work. He's gonna be

• 20:55Speaker 05

  out, you know, past the time they would go to bed. Um, and you know, Tina's the sort of older, more responsible one and she's like, okay, we need to, we need to go to bed. And so the two, they go up to the second floor, they get ready for bed and they go to their respective bedrooms. Um, and so they, they get in their beds, the lights are off, the house is quiet and they try to go to sleep. But after maybe only 20 or 30 minutes of laying in bed, they're both still awake, but they aren't aware of the other. They're in different rooms, but they're both awake. There's this tapping noise that begins to start in the house. And, you know, at first it was sort of subtle and both girls would report hearing it. But it wasn't clear if the tapping noise was, you know, just a house sound, you know, houses make noises. Is it something outside? Is it the wind? You know, whatever it was.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  But more than that, it was kind of hard to pinpoint if it was coming from the floor they were on. The first floor, even the basement, is it outside? It just sort of felt like this almost omnipresent tapping sound. And it wasn't rhythmic, it wasn't like consistent, it was sort of sporadic, but it was constant. So there's a tapping sound that's sort of just irregular, but constant. And so it was very, it caught their ear. And so Tina, the older one, she sort of is, you know, just doing her best to forget about it and just try to go to bed. But Karen, the younger one, the nine-year-old, she can't sleep. She starts feeling worried about this tapping sound. You know, they've just done a séance in the basement and now there's tapping in the house.

• 22:25Speaker 05

  She's a kid, you know, it's scary. And so she leaves her bedroom and she goes, you know, right over to the next room where Tina is. And Tina's in bed and Karen goes in and she's like, hey, you know, Tina, do you hear the tapping sound, you know, in the house? And Tina's like, yeah, don't worry about it. Like, it's no big deal. But the two, they're just like sitting there and Tina's like trying to reassure Karen. But the tapping, it sort of begins to intensify a little bit. And Tina, she has this almost epiphany. And she's like, as she's trying to tell Karen not to worry about it, the tapping is getting louder. And she's like, you know, what if, what if that's mom? You know, we, we were just trying to contact her. What if the, the séance worked? What if mom did hear us?

• 23:09Speaker 05

  Maybe she's here, maybe she's in the house, maybe she's trying to get in touch with us. Maybe her tapping is her trying to signal us in some way. And suddenly that hope that was dashed as their Ouija board session, you know, their séance hadn't worked. It's all back now. They're, they're suddenly riveted with this idea that the sounds they're hearing could be their mom. Who they, they just want their mom back so bad that they're prepared to believe anything at this point. Like, oh my God, it's mom. And so Tina and Karen, they get out of the bed and they walk into the hallway. Now, to this point, they still can't quite tell where the tapping is coming from. But by the time they got into the hallway, it's clear it's not coming from the floor thereon. It's coming from somewhere downstairs. And so they go into the dark stairwell in the second floor hallway.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  And they're looking down into the stairwell, I should say, that kind of banks around down to the first floor. And all they can hear is just this periodic tapping and it's coming from somewhere downstairs. And the two girls are standing at the top of the stairs, like not really sure what to do. And Tina, the older one, just suddenly goes, "Hey, Mom, is that you?" The tapping stops for a second and then they hear a rhythmic and then there's silence again. Oh, shit. So there's a clear response. And the girls, they think at first that it's something that's maybe it's coincidence. They can't, it can't be this immediate. It can't actually really be her. And so Tina again says, "Mom, really? Is that you?" And this time even louder.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  There's three taps that come back from somewhere downstairs. Clearly, something, someone is in the house and they're interacting with the girls and their dad's not home. But amazingly, the girls, remember, their mind state is, "It's Mom. This is a good thing. We're excited about this." You know, to most children, this would be horrifying, but for them and this part of their lives, this was confirmation that their mom is here. And it gave them an enormous amount of courage and happiness, frankly. And they're like, "Let's go down. Let's go downstairs and see what's going on. Let's see if we can... Maybe Mom's down there. Who knows, right? Let's go down there." And so down the steps the girls go. And as they're going, they're asking more questions. And they're starting to sense that the tapping, which is louder now, they can kind of tell that it's

• 25:21Speaker 05

  it's not somewhere in the first floor. It actually sounds like it's coming from the basement, potentially. There's a door in their kitchen on the first floor that leads down to the basement. And it sort of sounds like the tapping is coming from down there, maybe even coming on the backside of that door. But they're going down the stairs and they're firing off more questions like, "Mom." Like, the questions they're asking are all over the place, but they're asking these questions. And each time they're getting that three taps in response, like they're sure it's Mom. They get to the kitchen and now they've pinpointed the tapping is definitely coming from the basement. The door is shut to the basement. They go to the door, they open up the basement door, and they're looking down into like this stereotypically, you know, terrifying basement. It's pitch black, it's wooden creaky stairs, they can't see anything down there. And despite how confident they were that like, this is mom, this is where they drew the line. They're not prepared to,

• 26:06Speaker 05

  to go all the way into the basement where it's like, that's kind of horror movie territory, but they stood at the top of the stairs. And for an hour, they asked their mother questions. In their mind, they're talking to their mom. They're speaking into the basement, and they're asking all sorts of questions. Do you miss us? Tap, tap, tap. You know, sometimes they'd get like four or five taps, and they began to think that maybe that meant no, and three meant yes, but they had this whole thing where they're like, it's mom. It worked. The séance worked. But after an hour, their dad's still not home. They've had this unbelievable experience that they chalked up to their mom. But then it just kind of stops. There's no more tapping. No matter what questions they ask, it just sort of stops. And, you know, the girls, they stayed awake, you know, because they're sort of jazzed up by what's happened here.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  And around this time, around the time that the tapping has stopped, there's no more responses. Frank, their dad, comes home. And he's surprised to see his kids awake in the kitchen. And he's like, what are you guys doing? And they're like, oh, you wouldn't believe it, dad. It's mom. We had, we got the Ouija board out, we had a séance. They kind of explained the whole thing that happened, but they're so excited about it. And they're like, dad, it's, it's mom. We were talking to mom. We know it's her. It has to be her. And now Frank, you know, Frank also is in the process of going through what is this unbelievable, unbelievably bad situation for him. You know, he's lost his wife. He has to work all these extra shifts. He can't be around his daughters. He's worried about his kids. And he's seeing his kids light up and be so excited at this idea that they're talking to their mom,

• 27:32Speaker 05

  that even though he does not think for a second that there's truth to what he's telling him. He doesn't think that there was tapping. He doesn't think that their mom was in the house. He thinks that these are kids who've lost their mother. And they've come up with some coping mechanism, which is hearing, you know, random house tapping sounds, and they've convinced themselves it's their mother. And so without any hesitation, he just goes, I bet that was your mom. That's wonderful. You know, she's, she's looking out for you. She'll always be looking out for you. Your mom is, she's here with you now. She'll always be here with you. Your mom loves you. And the girls are so pleased. And they, they run up to bed, so excited to, you know, go tell their friends the next day. So they go to bed, and Frank frankly doesn't think much of it. He just is like, my kids are coping with a, with a terrible tragedy. And if they want to do that, that seems harmless enough.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  So he goes to bed. Over the next few days, the tapping sounds would continue, except they would only be heard by the girls. Frank would never hear the tapping sound. The girls would, you know, they'd hear it coming from the basement. They'd call their dad. He'd listen and they wouldn't, there'd be no more taps. It was like they would disappear when Frank showed up. But oddly enough, the tapping was no longer just happening at night and just in the basement. The tapping was sort of happening all over the house. You know, it would happen outside the front door. It was in the kitchen. It was in the girls' bedrooms. It was, it was everywhere. It was like the tapping was, it was always that tap, tap, tap when they were talking to it, but it was like all over the house. But again, every time they'd hear it, you know, Frank, you know, wouldn't be privy to it.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  He couldn't hear it. Frank's still telling himself that this is a relatively healthy coping mechanism, that it's not that big of a deal. But what ended up happening after about three days is the girls, they had convinced themselves that this is mom, right? This is a good thing. Well, by the third day post séance, when the tapping is happening a lot, the tapping had sort of migrated primarily to the girls' bedrooms. And it was also happening mostly at night now. So by the third day, it's sort of like all the tapping is, is happening in their bedrooms. And it's mainly under their bed, like they would hear the sound underneath their bed. And for the girls, they began to wonder why their mom would do that, because it just sort of feels like almost stereotypically terrifying for our kids. Something's under your bed.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  And they began to get this feeling that maybe this isn't mom. Maybe our séance worked, but we didn't bring mom's spirit into the house. Maybe we brought something malevolent or just something other. We don't know. And so they're starting to question if this is really a good thing or not. And that's what Frank picked up on. It's been a few days. Frank picks up on that. The girls no longer view this as a good thing and it's disrupting their sleep. And they would hear the tapping in the bed and Frank would come into the room. There'd be nothing there. He had no explanation, but the girls are really spooked. And so it was at this point that Frank began taking a harder stance with this girl. So around the third night, he just said, look, I know you're you're going through it right now. And I understand that you're you're dealing with a lot with your mom. But this isn't okay.

• 30:31Speaker 05

  This whatever you guys believe you're hearing with this tapping sound, I'm telling you, you have nothing to worry about in this house. But it's not happening. Okay, you're you're working yourself up over nothing and and you need you need to stop it. And if you can't, I'm I understand, but we're going to have to seek out professional help, like grief counseling or something, because it's not healthy for you all to be living in fear of a ghost in your house that, you know, it's it's just not okay. The girls are furious because they believed up until the third night that their dad accepted that the taps were real and that maybe it was their mom. And now he's sort of come out and been like, I don't believe you and, you know, forget about it, or else you're going to go to therapy. And so it sparked like real issues between the the daughters and the dad.

• 31:15Speaker 05

  You know, the dad's really trying to do his best, but there's real tension here. So following this confrontation, if you will, between Frank and his daughters, or whatever you want to call it, the tension between them remained. And for the girls, they felt like they didn't have their dad's support anymore. And they started to really be fearful of even being in their house. Like they didn't even want to be home anymore. You know, it's like, it's terrifying when you're there. You hear these tapping sounds. And so over the next several days, so now we're looking at like, you know, a week after the séance. So about a week later, the girls are finding every excuse to sleep over at friends' house and just be out of their house. And, you know, they're kind of jarring with their dad about like, did the tapping sounds happen or not? But when they're home, they hear the tapping sounds. And so fast forward about a week, a week post séance.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  And on this particular night, the girls didn't have a place to go. They didn't have a friend's house to crash at. Their dad was out working a late shift. And so they were there in their home that night, and there was nothing they could do about it. They had to go to bed and just deal with it. And the tapping is happening, you know, pretty consistently at this point, not literally at this point, but it's happening all the time. And so they're just like, okay, we just got to get through the night, you know, whatever.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  So the girls are, they're having their dinner in the kitchen, their dad is at work. And at a certain point, the tapping starts and it's coming from the basement. It's not the three rhythmic tappings, it's just this kind of periodic tapping that sort of was the precursor to, they could ask questions and get those rapid responses. And Tina looks over at Karen and she's like, you know, dad doesn't believe us. And, you know, the last week, every time this would happen, like, he would never hear it. He doesn't believe us, like, we have, we have to look into this. Like, he's not gonna look into this, we have to. And so there's active tapping in the basement, the door to the basement's right off the kitchen. And Karen is starting to get the sense that Tina's saying, we need to go into the basement right now and go look. Cause they hadn't done that yet, they had never really actually investigated the sound.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Would you have gone down there? Yeah. Would you really? As a, as a child? No, no, I'm sorry, as an adult me now, yes, as a child then, no way, no way. I'd probably send my wife down. You get in there.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  And so Tina, you know, is looking at Karen, who doesn't wanna do this, but Tina grabs a knife off the kitchen counter. And she's like, we have to go into the basement, we gotta see what's down there. And Karen, she doesn't wanna be up here alone, and so she's trying to tell Tina, like, no, we can't go down there, but she's like, fine. And so she gets behind Tina and Tina goes over to the door and the tapping's happening downstairs. And they open up the basement door and the tapping stops right away. As soon as the door opens, the tapping stops, it was going all up until that point, tapping stops. And down the stairs, the girls go, they walk down into the basement. And the light in the basement was one of those pull string lights you have to get to in the basement. And so it's dark in the basement, they're like wandering through this dark basement to get to the pull string.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  They get to the pull string, they pull it and they're both like totally on edge. And they're looking around and they would later say, you know, On some level, we were like, there's gotta be some logical explanation. Like, for example, a raccoon like got into the house. Wouldn't explain the responses we're getting with tapping sounds. But as a human being, we will go to great lengths to convince ourselves that we are okay in moments of crisis. A lot of times before you kind of cross the threshold into, oh, my God, this is a horrible crisis, your brain will say, no, everything's fine. Everything's good. Like, it's just a raccoon and they're kind of hoping for that. But they get down there, they pull the light and, you know, Tina's got her knife and Karen's like tucked up behind her. And they're looking around the basement. And I told you before, there's like nothing in the basement.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  There's like a washer and dryer. There's a wood, a wood shelf, like a shelf with some tools on it over here. But there's not even storage down there. It's just like this vacant, open space. There's nowhere to hide. And there's nothing down there. It is an utterly vacant space. There's gotta be a hole in the floor or something. Well, they looked. They looked all around the basement and there's nothing there. They're looking for where a raccoon could have gotten in. But it's like, as they're looking, it's dawning on them that there isn't a clear answer here. We've definitely heard the tapping. Dad hasn't, we have. And we're down here at the, the source of the tapping in many ways. And there's, there's nothing.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  And they've sort of mentally shifted to it could be malevolent. And so they're having this big fear response. They're like, okay, we can't be down here. This is, this is just horrifying. And so they turn and begin going back upstairs. And as they're walking up, they notice there's writing on the inside of the stairwell wall leading up to the first floor. They're walking up the stairs and right on the wall on the basement steps, written in red is, "I'm in your closet. Come find me." Oh, shit.

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• 39:01Speaker 05

  And so the girls see that and obviously they sprint out of the basement. They bolt out of the house. They were very friendly with their neighbor. They run to their neighbor. They're banging on the door. It's late at night. Neighbor opens the door like, what's going on? The girls are hysterical. They're like, oh my God, there's a ghost in our house. Like there's writing on the walls. And you know, the neighbor is aware of the fact that they've lost their mother and like understands that this is a very difficult time for them. And so no judgment passed, has no idea what's happening, just says, get in the house. We're going to wait for your dad. You know, you stay here and we'll wait for your dad, you know, and he'll know what to do. And so the girls, they're just happy to be away from their own house. Frank, not that much longer, comes home and the neighbor sees him pull into the driveway,

• 39:44Speaker 05

  immediately flags him down and you know, as gently as he can, he explains like, hey, so your daughters are with me. They're fine. I don't know what's going on in your house. They seem very spooked about something to do with writing on the walls in your basement. I don't really know, but they're very shaken up. They're at my house right now. I just want you to know. And Frank is like, okay, like he knows what this is about. Like this has been going on now for a week. And really all he's thinking is, I guess I better plan for, you know, therapy or something. He goes inside and he searches this whole house and there's nobody there. He goes into the basement and sure enough, written on the wall, it does say, I'm in your closet, come find me, but it's written in ketchup. Like it's someone put it there, but you know, his first thought is my daughters clearly put it there. You know, they're, they're the ones sort of playing into this delusion here.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  This is like a really unhealthy thing they've done. And now they're like, you know, acting out this whole thing with, with the neighbor and it's, it's becoming this big drama like this. This is clearly some huge, you know, grief response. And so he leaves the house not concerned in the least that this is like a real problem. He's thinking this is, this is, this is an issue of my daughters, like my daughters are struggling here and they, they need professional help. And so he comes back over to the neighbor's house and he tells his girls like, look, I, I know you're dealing with some tough stuff here, but you know, enough is enough. We're gonna start grief therapy, like literally tomorrow. And the girls, you know, they did experience what they just experienced and they're, they don't even know what to make of it.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  I mean, now it's really gone from, you know, this sort of tapping sound in the house to something very concrete. Like a, almost a threatening message left that clearly was designed for them to find. But their dad doesn't believe them. They're, they just, they feel trapped. Like, what do you even do? And so the girls are sort of resigned. You know, they've been worn down by this and they're just like, fine, like, well, fine dad, we'll, we'll do therapy. And so the girls literally, like, I think it was the next day, started therapy. And wouldn't you know it, over the coming several weeks, there was no more tapping in the house. It was like, everything went back to normal. Peace returned to the house, if you will. The girls were still terrified to be in the house, but even when they were alone, you know, the tapping was gone. And, you know, for Frank, he felt like,

• 41:58Speaker 05

  obviously, you know, you're in therapy now, you know, that, that's, it's always been that. It's, it's nothing more. It's just, it's been in your head, you know? But it wouldn't stay that way. So, one week after the séance is when the writing on the wall showed up, the, I'm in your closet, come find me. And that's what starts the, the group therapy session. The following three weeks, it's like peace in the house returns. So, at the end of those three weeks, so now effectively one month after first contact, if you will, the séance that the girls had at the very beginning, about one month after. Um, at this point, you know, they haven't forgotten, they, as in Frank, Tina and Karen have not forgotten about the tapping. They haven't forgotten about the weird stuff, but it's sort of, it's no longer a thing, right? And they've sort of returned to normal life.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  And on this day, this is like in October, I think at this point of, of 1986, Frank had taken Tina and Karen and one of their friends, a girl named Kathleen, out to get some ice cream. And so they went out, this is in the evening time, they'd gone out, they got ice cream, they're, they're just living their lives, sort of like moving on with life. And they come back to the Bowen household where they were going to spend the next hour or so before Kathleen had to go home. And when they got home, Frank went up to the front step of his house and he's about to open his door when he realizes that there's something off about his house. He looked into the window and he saw there was a couple of lights on inside the house that he just didn't remember leaving on. But this is not like such a big red flag that he's like, oh my God, don't go in the house. It's more like, that's weird. You know, I don't remember leaving those on.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  He was pretty conscious, I suppose, of leaving his lights off and on wherever he, whenever he left the house. And he sort of looked back at his daughters to maybe see if maybe they were going to say, oh, we left those on, but they don't even, they didn't, they don't even pick up on him thinking about this stuff. He puts the lock in and he, he puts the key and he unlocks the door, he opens it up and it gets even weirder. Because now he sees that there's, there's a radio that's on that was on really quietly that he can now hear. And also a TV is on, TV's on in the back of the house. So like some lights are on, TV, radio, and he also couldn't help but feel like some of the furniture in the first floor had been moved, but like slightly, only so much that, you know, if you lived in a place, you would notice the difference, but that's it. If you didn't live there, you wouldn't have picked up on it, but things seemed a little bit out of place.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  And so Frank, he sort of turns to Karen and to Tina and Kathleen, their friend, and he's like, hey, did you guys, did you leave this stuff on? And the girls, by the way, at this point, they're seeing these things and Tina and Karen, Tina and Karen are immediately back in that, oh my God, it's happening again. You know, it's this thing, whatever it is. And they're like, we didn't do that. And so they're, they're immediately terrified. Kathleen has been fully read in by Tina and Karen. They, they've heard about all the things they saw. She believes it fully. And so the three girls are like horrified. Frank doesn't really know what to make of this because remember, he believed that his girls were sort of behind this delusion. That's what he would refer to it as. It's just a delusion and therapy was the way to get out of this thing. So he's like,

• 44:53Speaker 05

  I think that's still true, but I also have to, I have to deal with the fact that this is hard to reconcile. They were with me. How could they have done this? And they seemed genuinely scared. And so he hasn't really decided as he's walking into the house, how he's going to react to this. He's like, looking at his girls who are all scared tucked up behind him and sort of looking at the scene like, what's going on here? And so he does this like, half invested search of his house, where he's not really sure how he feels about it. He sort of walks around the house. He turns off the radio, turns off the TV, you know, turns on the lights because now they're home. But there's nobody there. You know, he searches the first floor, goes to the second floor. The girls are right behind him the whole time. They're so scared. They go down in the basement, you know, and no one's down there. The house is quiet. No one's there. But after he finishes the whole search, he

• 45:38Speaker 05

  realizes there's actually one room that he hadn't checked yet. Just when he had first walked in, there's this room right off the front door. It's like the front sitting room that overlooked the front of the house. And just because he sort of half began the search, wasn't really planning it, he just sort of overlooked it. And so he has one more room to search. It's this front room of the house. And so he's like, okay, I'm gonna go search that room. And so, again, he searched the whole house. Nobody's there. He walks into this front room. And when he walks in, he's basically looking at windows that overlooked the front of the house. And as soon as he walks in, he sees written on the wall above those windows is the words, "Marry Me," written in shaving cream. And he walks in and he's just looking at the words and he's, he's thinking to himself, my, my daughters, I

• 46:22Speaker 05

  just don't feel like this was them. How could this be them? I would have noticed something like this. It just feels like this can't have been them. But he can't quite wrap his head around what that actually means. If you accept this isn't your daughters, then everything your daughters have been saying before might also be true. So he's like stuck with this almost existential crisis of like, what do you do with this? And he's staring at the letters and his daughters are, his daughter and friend are right, like literally up against his backside. And then he hears something. Over to his left, out of his eyesight, still in this front room, sort of tucked up against the back wall relative to how he's looking, was just a closet. And he hears the sound of the closet opening. And he knows his girls are right behind him.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  And so he turns, and out of the closet walks this figure that's wearing a dress. They have clown makeup painted on their face. They have a hatchet over their shoulder. It's this man who walks out and he stares at Frank and the girls and he just points and he goes, "Upstairs." And he starts walking towards them with this hatchet over his shoulder. And Frank, who, I mean, he's in complete fight or flight response here. He just like protects the girls and he's like, "Go, just do what he says." And they start going out of the front room towards the stairs that go to the second floor. And this, you know, dress-wearing, hatchet-wielding, makeup-wearing maniac, also is the dress of his dead wife. You know, he's staring at Frank intently, got this hatchet, and he just keeps telling him like, "Go, go up the stairs."

• 47:44Speaker 05

  And so Frank keeps the girls between, you know, the guy, he stays between the guy and the girls, and he gets them to go up the stairs. And as soon as they get to the top of the stairs, Frank is still staring at this guy who's right in front of him with the hatchet. He tells the girls, "Going to the first bedroom." And so Kathleen goes in, Tina goes in, Karen goes in, and then when Frank goes in, this guy with the hatchet is just sort of methodically slowly walking after him, like he's just taking his time. As soon as Frank goes in and all the girls are in with him, he slams the door shut and he holds it shut. And suddenly there's this struggle between, you know, the hatchet-wielding maniac and Frank to open this door. And so they're battling at the door, and Tina, the 15-year-old, immediately just turns,

• 48:25Speaker 05

  runs to the window, and jumps out of the second-floor window, leaps out of the house. She slams to the ground. There's screaming and all this chaos happening up in the room right above her. She just takes off to that same neighbor's house. And now she's in full hysterics, screaming that "Somebody's in my house, they're attacking my family." And the neighbor now can sense this is not some, you know, delusion these girls are having, something horrible is happening next door. And so they call the police. Police show up, you know, a couple of minutes later, and when they get there, they look up at that second-floor bedroom where Frank and the girls were, and Frank is leaning out the window screaming. That, you know, there's somebody in my house. They're they're right at the door. I don't know where they are. Like, they're gone. They're they're in my house. And so the police immediately, they get the the ladder put up and they get the girls and Frank out of the house and they

• 49:10Speaker 05

  they usher them over to the to the neighbor's house and they're all safe. They're all fine. Traumatized, no doubt. But the guy never got into the bedroom and at some point took off. And so Frank and the girls were okay. And so Frank, Kathleen, the friend, Karen and Tina, they're all fine. They've been moved over to the the other house. But now the police, they go in, you know, guns drawn to search the house for, you know, whoever this person is who broke into their house. And so in they go and they they search the house and, you know, there's there's no sign of any sort of disturbance of any kind. I mean, there's nothing there. No one's in the house. They searched everywhere. They did ultimately, though, find a hatchet that was leaned up against the back sliding glass door and that door was partially ajar.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  And so it sort of gave the impression that, you know, this this person, whoever it was, is is gone. And so after, you know, this the search of the house, the police are like, look, you know, we Frank to Frank, they're like, we we don't really know what to tell you here. You know, we we don't know where this person is, you know, your description of them, unfortunately. It's sort of like you described somebody wearing a costume. You know, we don't even know what they look like realistically. They had clown makeup on, a dress, you know, we think they're a man. They could be a woman. We don't know how old they are like. We don't know what to tell you other than it seems risky to have you stay in your house. And so for right now, while we continue, while we continue to investigate and try to figure out who this is, we want you and your family to just stay with a relative. Just don't stay at your house. What we're gonna do

• 50:38Speaker 05

  is we're gonna basically stake out your property and just assume that maybe this guy might come back. And maybe we'll catch them then. And then in the interim, we're gonna be canvassing the town and trying to figure out who did this to you. And Frank's like, fine. And so really, without taking anything from his house, he and the girls just they leave. They go to a relative's house. And over the next few days, the police do canvas or they they stake out Frank's property. And nobody goes in or out. It's just the vacant home that no one's going in or out of. There's nothing, nothing's going on. And police are communicating that to Frank the whole time, like, hey, you know, we've we've asked in town too, and and no one seems to know who this could be. Again, it's sort of limiting with the description of this person. We don't really know who we're even looking for.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  But no one's gone into your house. And we think at this point, you know, they're probably not gonna come back. But just for safety, you know, give it a couple more days before we let you go back in. And so this is, you know, a couple of days into this and Frank, you know, he, he and his girls, they had to leave pretty abruptly. And so they, they were not able to take any supplies with them. They had their toiletries and their pillows and all those, all their nice things. They're, they're in the house still. And so it's broad daylight on the third day of this and Frank's like, you know what? I think I can pretty much just go over there, run in the house real quick and, and just get my stuff, bring it back and, and then we'll have a couple more days and we'll move back in. And so he drives, Frank does, broad daylight on this like third day of the stakeout. He gets to his property and he doesn't see any police anywhere, doesn't see any cop cars anywhere. He's thinking,

• 52:05Speaker 05

  oh, maybe they're unmarked or something. I don't know. But there's like nobody parked anywhere. It just looks like his house is here and no one's watching it. And he's like, okay, well, they're probably here somewhere. I'm just gonna run in real quick, get my stuff and leave. And so he parks in his driveway, he gets out of his car and he starts walking towards the front door. But before he even gets to the porch, he thinks he sees something moving in his house up on the second floor, that same bedroom where they had been. And, you know, he stops immediately because he's thinking, oh, wait a minute. What if they're watching my property from in the house? Like they didn't specify how they were going to watch the house. And I don't want to just walk in there, you know, to potentially an armed police officer who's waiting for an intruder. I don't want to just barge in. And so I better like take a second and, and call them and really let

• 52:49Speaker 05

  them know like, hey, I'm, I'm here before I go in. And so he goes to the, the neighbor and he says, hey, let me use your phone. He calls the police and he's like, hey, you know, I know you're staking out my house, but can you just confirm that you have officers in my house? Uh, then that's how you're watching it. Cause that's, that's who I think I just saw in the house. And they're like, no one's watching your house from in the house. They're outside the house. And Frank's like, well, I didn't see anybody outside the house. And the guy he was talking to was like, well, then you must've caught them at turnover. I bet right now the, the police officer who's supposed to be on duty probably just arrived and you must've got there right in that like couple of minute transition time, which unfortunately does happen sometimes. But we promise somebody's there and what you ought to do is just go over there and I bet right now there's an officer watching

• 53:31Speaker 05

  your property. Why don't you talk to them? And I'm sure they can go in and check the house for you if you want. And Frank's like, okay, that's weird because I definitely saw someone in the house, but I'll go check. And so he hangs up, he goes outside and sure enough, there's a cop that's parked right outside the house. He goes over to the cop and he sort of explains the situation and the guy's like, "Okay, you know, no one's in your house, but I will go in and look around before you go in and get your stuff." And so Frank stays out on the curb and the officer goes up to the house. Now, remember, this house, no one's going in and out. And with the exception of a couple of minutes of turnover, when there's a little bit of a gap sometimes, this house is just vacant. Nothing's happening in this house.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  The cop walks up and he gets to the door and he unlocks it and he opens it up and he just cannot believe what he sees inside the house. There were pennies glued to the ceiling all across the first floor, just like- Pennies? Pennies, like the coin, pennies, glued to the ceiling all across the first floor. And there are all these like half-full champagne glasses sort of positioned all over the first floor and the furniture's clearly been maneuvered and arranged in sort of bizarre ways. You know, it's just, it's totally inexplicable and all the guy's thinking is, "We've been watching this house. Clearly, somehow, someone's getting in and out of this house or they're still here." And I don't know how that's possible, but we don't, something's off here, obviously.

• 54:54Speaker 05

  And so instead of searching the house, he pulls out, calls in backup, and they do yet another complete search of this house. Like, they're gonna tear this place apart and figure out how the heck someone's getting in and out and doing things inside the house with nobody noticing. Like, what's going on here? And they search the whole house, top to bottom, and it's a much more thorough search this time. And they cannot find anyone. There's no sign of anybody in the house, how they got in, how they got out. It's just this total weird mystery. And at the end of it, there were a couple of officers that were down in the basement, you know, that like blank basement, and they're just, they're standing there like frustrated, like, "How could, how could this be happening? What's going on here?" And one of them was leaning on the washing machine and he's like, "I just don't understand

• 55:39Speaker 05

  how we could have missed this." And as he's talking, the washing machine suddenly moves from his weight being on it and he looks down and behind where the washing machine had been, now that it's been moved, is a little cutout on the wall. And it sort of looked like it was where the vents of the washing machine and the dryer would go to, but he sort of moved it a little bit more and he realized that there was a big enough cutout behind these two, the washer and dryer. A person could realistically fit through the hole in the wall. And so they pulled the washer dryer away and they poke their head in and they see with their flashlight, there's like a tunnel that's been burrowed into the wall in the basement. And crouched down in the corner, looking back at them, is this dude wearing a dress.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  Holy shit. And the dude in the corner, his name was Danny LaPlante. And I'm gonna tell you about Danny LaPlante because the story, it takes a horrible turn. This is already bad, but it gets exponentially worse. So Danny LaPlante was this 16-year-old kid and he clearly had humongous issues, huge issues. Six months earlier, from when he's discovered in the wall, he had had some sort of fleeting interaction with Tina Bowen, the 15-year-old. Apparently, he made some sort of move on her and he felt rejected. Tina didn't recall it at all. They apparently went to school together, but she does not have a memory of interacting with this guy ever. You know, it's like, I didn't even know that he felt that way about me, but he felt spurned by her. He felt rejected.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  And the way he handled his rejection is he snuck into their house right after that, so six months earlier, burrowed a hole in their wall in the basement and was living in their walls. And what he was doing is, by the way, he did not have access to their whole house from that hole in the basement. He only had a little crawl space in the walls in the basement. He was leaving the crawl space all the time and just wandering their house with the family there. He was spying on the family 24/7 and then, at a certain point, when the girls went downstairs and had that séance, Danny could tell they were having a séance to try to contact their mother. And all those tapping sounds he made were intentional. He was trying to pretend to be their mother to make them feel like it's mom.

• 57:54Speaker 05

  He was the one, he snuck into their bedrooms and was flicking the underside of their bed. Like, this guy was asking to get caught, he never did, but it was him pretending to be their mom and then eventually he mixed it up and decided to be evil and pretended to be a malevolent spirit. So this guy's completely psychopathic, right? So he gets arrested and he's put in jail. And 10 months later, as he's awaiting trial... He is given bond. He's given, he's allowed to leave jail. He's given bond. That's, that's the framing, right? Yeah, bond.

• 58:26Speaker 05

  And while he's out on bond, he sneaks into another family's house. And for reasons that we still don't even understand now, he murdered three of the four people in that family after living in their walls. And now he's currently in jail and he recently was put up for a parole hearing. And he was rejected and during the parole hearing, they determined that he's arguably one of, if not the single most sociopathic member in the entire prison system.

• 58:55Speaker 05

  So that's the story of Danny LaPlante. Damn, how did he kill the, uh, the other family? He, he drowned them. He drowned them? I believe the mom was strangled and the two children he drowned. Jeez. Yeah. And so if you look at this guy now, if you look at videos of Daniel LaPlante now. I mean, if you were to imagine somebody capable of doing that, that's what he looks like.

• 59:20Speaker 05

  So, not good, dude.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  How do you find this stuff? Well, that one, that one's pretty, pretty well, like, publicized, I suppose. People know about that. Yeah, but the, the thing that, and this is not to like toot my own horn, but I think that the, the thing that I will do to stories that I think brings them to life a little bit. Is there are stories that are told, you know, by loads of people on loads of accounts and channels and movies and TV shows. But a lot of time there's sort of like a formula for how each one gets told. For example, this is completely random, but, uh, like Roswell, New Mexico, I don't even have the story in mind, but the way that story is often told is Roswell, New Mexico is like where aliens by the government are like kept, you know? Uh huh. And like, that's how you start the story and then you sort of back into it. And that's how everybody tells that story.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  If I was going to tell, and I, I'd never done this, a story about Roswell. I would start with some anecdote that led to the, to this theory even existing. I would start with somebody's experience in real time. That was potentially paranormal and then I would begin to connect it to Roswell in some way. Maybe, maybe the government comes in after the fact and, you know, suddenly the, the This person saw the government's asking questions and and it turns out it's it's the Asians from Roswell, New Mexico. And so I like to find a way to tell a story where the payoff is only at the end. You know, it's like, especially in true crime stories, which we do a lot of, so many times when you tell a story like that, it becomes one fixated on the antagonist,

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  the killer, because they're the most obscene, they're the most memorable in the worst ways. And you lead with like, today, I'm going to tell you the story of the murder of so and so. And so going into it, you sort of already know what it's gonna, what the story is, and you're fixated on the killer. And so the way I tell these stories, it's designed to be like you're in the POV of the normal people that are meant to feel relatable to you. The people who, like the Bowen family, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all, that's it. And the other family that were killed, the Gustafsons, wrong place, wrong time. I want you to inhabit their point of view and have the killer be almost anonymous. This is a story where Danny LaPlante gets really named, but the killer or like the bad thing that happens always needs to feel like,

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  sort of this thing that always happens in a Mr. Ballin story. It's this ambiguous bad thing. It's the character in the story that I can relate to. I can like feel their emotions. That way, by the time the bad thing happens, it's like heart wrenching. You're like, oh, my God, like, I feel for those people, you know? So that story gets told a ton, but it's often told with, I'm going to tell you the story of the guy in the wall.

• 1:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  Man, we do a phenomenal job.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  Thank you. That was, that was a lot with.

• 1:02:02Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Living in the wall?

• 1:02:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. And you know what's crazy is like,

• 1:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  This guy have parents?

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  I think he did. He was a very, I don't quote, I want to say a very dysfunctional family, if you can imagine. So, but there's, there's actually, these are far less good stories, but there's a shocking number of, because we research this stuff, shocking number of people that have found. People living in their walls. And honestly, it's usually, it's not like you can live in someone's wall. It isn't like your walls magically connect all over your house. That's not really how it works. But there are definitely instances, especially in like major cities of like squatters finding their way into these apartment complexes and different people's homes. Like, like actually, this is, this is not even a full story, but there was this, this, there was a movie based on this,

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  and I'm not prepared to tell this whole story, but there was this apartment complex, I want to say it was in New York, where there were all these people getting killed, like just in this massive like section eight style housing, like people packed on top of each other, super big high rise. All these people were getting killed, or just turning up dead in their apartments. And, you know, nobody knew why. They just would be found dead in their apartment, sort of inexplicably. And it would turn out that the way this apartment was built was really, really cheaply, in particular, the way they insulated the walls between each of the different units. So in essence, if you wanted to, there was a way from, I think, the basement, where you could get into the inner

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  workings of every single, you could get into the space between every single apartment. There was effectively like scaffolding, very near.

• 1:03:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  And, and even worse than that, every single apartment, their mirror was just placed into the drywall. It wasn't anchored at all. And so these dudes began sneaking into people's apartments by just climbing inside of the wall, like this high-rise building, and punching open the mirror. Now they're in your apartment, and killing the people in the apartment, and then going back in through the mirror.

• 1:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 1:04:08Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:05:36Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:06:21Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:06:49Speaker 05

  And there was the, I don't know if this one was true or not, but there was one about, in a way, it's sort of not heartwarming at all. It's bad, but it's the closest thing to heartwarming.

• 1:07:00Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know if you have any heartwarming stories, John.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  This one is like, there's this, there was this guy who, I want to say, this might be, I don't know if this is a true story or not, but it's a great, you can probably look it up. It's one of the more viral clips that's out there, and I think it's true. There was this guy who, he lived in the city, it was in New York, and I think he shot content for like a vlog or something. I don't think he was a big influencer or anything, but he was a type of guy who like filmed himself a lot. And there was this, someone put together a compilation of all these videos of him. Over the course of these vlogs he was doing, he was mentioning that he's like, "Man, it's the weirdest thing happened to me last night. Like, my toothbrush was like on the other side of the counter." You know, it's little

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  things that in the vlog, he's clearly not making a big deal out of it, but he's saying them. He's like, "That's so weird. I feel like I'm losing my mind." Like, it just, here and there, he just mentioned that there are all these weird things happening. He lives alone, he lives in a big apartment building in New York, and he eventually starts to like question his own sanity. He begins to say to his followers, or whatever you want to call it, he's like, "I just, something weird is happening to me. Like, I keep forgetting where I'm putting things. You know, I keep buying things and they're like disappearing, in particular food, and like weird stuff is happening in the kitchen." And so he eventually sets up a camera in his kitchen. It's a very small, like, New York City apartment kitchen, New York City apartment kitchen, and he sets up a camera. And, you know, over the first

• 1:08:29Speaker 05

  couple of nights, he's filming, nothing happens. He doesn't even know what he's looking for. Like, he's not going to, "Oh, someone's living in my apartment with me." He's just like, "What? Am I sleepwalking? Like, what am I doing?" And then there's this one clip that's going crazy viral, it'd be easy to find. It's the middle of the night and this cupboard opens and this little woman, this little woman climbs out of the cupboard and she's like looking around and she goes over to a sink. She hasn't even got off the counter yet and she squats down and pees in a sink. Then she jumps down and she goes to his fridge and she starts eating all this food in his fridge. And then she like goes around the house. She comes back with like a toothbrush, sure enough. She like cleans her teeth, puts everything back and then she goes back into the, into the cupboard and puts everything back.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  And the guy discovered it and he was horrified.

• 1:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  This is real too?

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know that this, I've seen this video and I believe it's true. And this guy did an interview for it. He was like, yeah, it turns out in that cupboard, you could basically climb up like into the, the ceiling of the apartment and hide. But it was this woman who, and this is the heartwarming part, if you will. Uh, I think that she had no money, you know, she was down on her luck. She was this elderly woman who had literally walked into his apartment when he left the door open one day. And just like magically found this hiding spot and had been there for a year. So he was living in this room for a year. It's like crazy.

• 1:09:51Shawn Ryan?

  Shit dude. You uncover some wild shit.

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 1:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  Do you believe in paranormal stuff?

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  Uh, I don't know. I sort of do. I think that the, the, what's happened is in, in virtue of constantly searching for stories that, you know, are credible enough that we would share them on our shows. You sort of are exposed to a lot of stuff that's clearly not true. Especially when it comes to like user submissions, a lot of that stuff. It could be true, but there's just no way I can prove any level of credibility. It's one person's perspective type of thing. But, um, there are definitely, there are definitely some things that are tough to explain. And I think that where I go, where I go to, uh, is It's sort of a, it's almost a cop out to say, you know, paranormal doesn't exist.

• 1:10:44Speaker 05

  Only because all you have to do is just zoom out. Zoom out a little bit on, on our species. Zoom out a little bit on Earth. It doesn't matter what you think of how we got here or, or whether there's God, whether there isn't, or whatever your interpretation of existence and our place in it, doesn't matter. It is undeniably, it is undeniably the case that we are this little tiny thing in this vast space that we don't really understand. Yet even through every religion, we still don't really understand. Like, we don't really know with absolute clarity who we are and what we're doing here. We have good ideas, we have great theories, but it's undeniably part of the human experience

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  that we are like, "Yeah, we don't really know. We think, we think so. I believe this, but I don't really know." And so because of that, why is it so outlandish to think that there could be, for example, like supernatural activity? I mean, there's, there's, um, I told this story, actually on the Storytime with Mr. Ballin, the new show we've been doing. I told it to Tom Segura on our first episode. The shortened version of it is, there's a story of this, this Mexican pilot, who's this young civilian pilot who was learning how to fly, just as a civilian. He's a 21-year-old kid, forget his name. And he, uh, there was the day where he was gonna fly solo for the first time. So he shows up to the, to the airfield.

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  I think it's called Chimala Can, Mexico, I'm butchering the name. He shows up, you know, he's done all his tandem, or whatever you call it, flights with an instructor. Today, he's gonna fly on his own. And the flight path that he was gonna be on was very simple. Take off, you know, do a couple of turns, come back and land, just show us you can do it, and then, you know, you're certified. So, he's not nervous, he gets in the plane, he takes off, he takes off, I think it was like 9:15 in the morning. I wanna say this is in the 80s or 90s, I forget, but it wasn't super recent. He takes off, and everything's going fine, and he begins making his turn. And then at a certain point, there's like this fog that rolls in and they were sort of aware of the fog. But the fog like it really came in fast.

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  And as he's entering this, this fog, he loses his visibility. And this is also at a time where the instruments in the aircraft were pretty rudimentary. Like it was basically dead reckoning. You're sort of looking out the window to see where you're going. This might even have been in the sixties or seventies now that I think about it. It was not recent. And all he's got is like his compass and like his altimeter, like he doesn't have much going on. And he's just sort of looking out the window and he's, he's seeing where he's at. And he said, okay, I'm good. He's like making his turn. But at a certain point, he knows he needs to begin to descend to land. And he basically knows where he is. He figures once I go below the fog, I'm going to see the runway and I'll land. But as he tries to descend, he realizes his craft, his airplane's not responding.

• 1:13:39Speaker 05

  You know, it's not, it's flying, it's steady, you know, it's not faltering, but it's not descending. And he tries to like pull the yoke to one side. It's not turning right, it's not turning left, he can't do anything. He's not panicking, but as this is happening, he realizes that, you know, the plane is not just leveled off. It actually is beginning to climb and he has no control over it. He's just going up. And so he, he goes over the radio, he's, he's trying to tell, you know, I guess the air traffic control of what's going on. But he doesn't really even know what's going on, other than he's lost, lost control of his aircraft. He's in this big, you know, cloud of fog, he's sort of, you know, losing sight of anything. And then, and as he's, as he's rising, uh, he begins to lose consciousness and finally just passes out. So he's riding up into the clouds with no control and he passes out.

• 1:14:24Speaker 05

  And so Raphael, pretty sure his name's Raphael, for the sake of this story, I'm gonna call him Raphael from here on out. So Raphael, he wakes up sort of abruptly and he's like, like looking around and immediately he takes stock of, you know, what's going on. Cause he just passed out in the cockpit a minute ago and he's flying solo, pretty dangerous. And he sees that his plane's still flying. He's flying level. His plane's fine and the mist is all gone. The fog is all gone. And he looks out his window and he sees that, you know, not only is the fog all gone, but he's actually over a very, you know, new looking environment. He's, he's flying over water. Now, in every direction, it's water. And, you know, he's, he's really just happy that he hasn't crashed,

• 1:15:07Speaker 05

  you know, and he's, he can't really picture how he got here. But as he's sort of taking stock and, you know, taking back control of the plane and now he does have control of the plane again. He realizes there's somebody trying to talk to him on the radio. And they're like, hey, hey, Rafael, Rafael, like, hey, what's going on Rafael? And he, and he's like, oh my God, like, I don't even know what to say to you. Like, I don't even know where I am. And the guy over the radio is air traffic control off the coast of, I forget where it is, some coastal city in Mexico. They're like, hey, I've been talking to you for the last hour or so. Are you, are you okay? And is somebody with you right now? And Rafael's like, what? Like, no, like, it's just me. I, I fell asleep. I don't know how I got here.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  And so the air traffic control guy is very like suspect of what's going on. And he's like, hey, do me a favor, like, turn around, like, come over here. You're gonna land right here at, you know, wherever, whatever city this is. You're gonna come land right here and we're gonna talk to you, okay? And so he's like, thank you, you know, okay? So he turns around and he lands. And where he is, and now forget, I think it's, it's, it's three hours away from where he took off. Where he lands is a three hour flight away. Let's put it that way. I forget the name of where he lands. So he lands and as soon as he lands, he's thinking like, oh my God, I'm getting so much trouble. I definitely didn't pass my test. Like, this did not go well. He gets out of his, his aircraft and there's all these people waiting for him. Like these like stereotypical like in suits, like government officials. They show, that's what it looks like.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  That's the way he reports it. They, and they take him and before he can even ask questions about what the heck just happened, they're like, hey, you're gonna come with us. We're gonna screen you and see if you're on drugs. And also we want to give you a psychological test to make sure you're sane. And, you know, the whole time he's like, what is going on? He's trying to ask questions. Nobody's giving him an answer. Like, it's these, you know, people in suits that have just kind of whisked him away to this hospital. And he gets to the hospital and, and they, they give him a drug screening and he's totally sober. And they, they have a psychologist talk to him who determines that he's shaken, but he's, he's sane. And it's only at that point that they're like, all right, Rafael, we're gonna, we're gonna tell

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  you what the heck's going on here. And he has no idea. He's like totally clueless what's happened here. So he took off at like 9:15 a.m. This is what they told him. They're like, you took off at 9:15 a.m. You flew up into the cloud and then no one could find you again. And then at about, I want to say it was like, I forget the time exactly, but it was like an hour later or an hour and a half later, call it like 10:30, 10:45, air traffic control off the coast of Mexico, they picked up this blip on their radar, flying in circles out over the water. And it was Rafael. And they're like, what are you doing here? The guy who was like, hey, are you alone in the cockpit right now? That guy, that same air

• 1:17:54Speaker 05

  traffic control? He got on the radio with Rafael and he spoke to him for an hour. And they recorded his conversation. And at some point in this conversation with Rafael, that Rafael doesn't remember, there's a recording of this, I wish I could play for you right now, where Rafael, it doesn't sound like him, but he's the only one in the cockpit, and it's recorded on air traffic control, he says something to the effect of, this is not Rafael. We come to you from another planet. We're using his body as a microphone. You need to understand that your species is on the brink of destruction, that you're using nuclear weapons, you're about to turn on yourselves, and you're going to annihilate yourselves if you don't stop. And if you don't stop, like, there are, there are, up

• 1:18:39Speaker 05

  and killing each other, or else someone's gonna have to intervene. It's sort of like the message, but it's, it's said through Rafael. And if you listen to it, even though it's in Spanish, it's, it sounds horrifying. His voice sounds deep and it's like garbly and it's, you can tell the air traffic control guy, as he's talking back and forth to him, he's, he's unnerved by it. And then magically, at like 10:30 or 10:45, when Rafael comes to in the cockpit, his voice totally changes on the recording. He's like, hey, what's going on? I just woke up. I just woke up. So Rafael has no memory of it, but there's a couple other anomalies that don't really add up. One, you have just the fact that there's a recording of the conversation where for an hour, this guy's getting this weird feedback

• 1:19:23Speaker 05

  from Rafael that sounds like another alien species talking to him. But also, the plane itself, it's a three-hour flight to get to that body of water. And he had enough fuel in his plane, I want to say for like an hour's flight or two hours' flight. It was less. When they recovered his plane, he had like three-quarters full tank of gas. So just to get to where he was, even if he had flown straight, one, he didn't have enough time, because it was 9:15-ish takeoff, 10:45 a.m. or whatever it was, he's found over the body of water. That's not three hours, that's an hour and a half. So it's less than three hours, so even a fast plane couldn't have got there in three hours.

• 1:20:02Speaker 05

  And the fuel was literally like too full to be there. And, and so the only way you can get this story, uh, this is sort of dramatic, but it's, it's good for the story. The story's not really widely talked about, because it's like a very scrutinized story in Mexico. Because people are like, this, this is the best piece of evidence that something weird's going on. Like, there could be aliens out there, this feels like proof. The story has been buried in an archive in this library in Mexico. And the way we got access to it, I kid you not, is we had to write a handwritten letter to this, uh, Mexican library to request to use the story in the recording. Because it's the recording, that's the transcript in the recording, uh, in the recording.

• 1:20:45Speaker 05

  And then when we asked, they had to interview us to figure out what we were using it for. Are you, I swear to God. Are you serious? Yeah, and they were like, whatever you do, don't make a video about it.

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  And here we are. And here we are, yeah, so. No shit. Right? How'd you find that one? So we have, uh, we have a pretty amazing team of like researchers, and we have one, um, Sam, who's our Spanish language researcher, and so she will specifically read news sources that are, you know, Spanish language, that we don't necessarily have access to, and, um, she just found it. Yeah, I guess people were talking about it, um... On the interwebs, if you will.

• 1:21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is wild.

• 1:21:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:21:32Shawn Ryan?

  Have you had any, any paranormal stuff happen to you?

• 1:21:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I had the, I had, it's a long one. If you want to hear a long one. I have a long story. How much time do we got?

• 1:21:44Shawn Ryan?

  We got, we got, we got all the time in the world.

• 1:21:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, uh, we, I do, I have like, I have one thing that happened to me that I, I don't even know if it's paranormal or not. I, I would say that it likely feels close. And in a way, it's, it, people think it's like the reason I started doing Mr. Ballin', but it's totally coincidental. I have, I have exactly one time that I had something strange happen to me. And it, it also happens to be one of the first stories I told on the internet that went pretty viral. Um, but it's not why I do this. It's just happenstance. So, um, when I was, uh, 16 years old, I was big into snowboarding. And I had these two buddies of mine who both were named Nick. Uh, and one of them's nickname was Wolf, like the animal Wolf.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  And so for the sake of story, there's Nick and there's Wolf. And the three of us, we snowboarded together all the time. We used, we, so I grew up just south of Boston, Massachusetts. And I lived in a town called Quincy and it's, you know, Massachusetts is not known for its rugged mountain peaks. Uh, and so there's really nowhere to go snowboarding. Uh, but, uh, there was this place called Blue Hills. Uh, it's this little ski resort, ski resort. Um, it's literally a hill, hence the name Blue Hills, uh, in Milton, Massachusetts. And, you know, they pump snow onto it and it's, it's no, no kidding, just a little tiny hill. And we loved it. We were there all the time, taught snowboarding there, you know, it was like, that was our place. In the winter, me, Nick and Wolf were there all the time. And, uh, but every winter from the time I was like maybe 12, so 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

• 1:23:18Speaker 05

  The one big trip we would take is Nick, uh, Nick's family had a cabin in New Hampshire, up in the White Mountains. And for us, that was like the one time where we'd go stay at the cabin and for like a weekend or a few days, we would go snowboarding at like real mountains in New Hampshire, which compared to Blue Hills in Massachusetts. These were like, you know, Mount Everest. It was amazing.

• 1:23:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 05

  And so we really looked forward to that trip every single year. But when I was 16, we had a trip planned to go up to this cabin and their cabin itself, it's located up on this old abandoned ski resort, which matters to the story. Basically, they built all these little cabins on, I think it's called King Pine was the name of the resort before it shut down. But there's all these cabins that were built, you know, for the ski resort, but then the ski resort shut down and a lot of the cabins got demolished. Nobody really kept them or they were sold off or whatever, but there was a few that kept their cabin on these old abandoned mountains. And there's really like very little in the way of public service that goes up there. So the roads get all nasty and stuff, but it was like cool to be living on the side of the mountain.

• 1:24:23Speaker 05

  But anyhow, we had a trip to go up there planned and sort of out of left field, Nick's father passed away. It was, honestly, I think it was a heart attack, but it was very abrupt. And when we would go to this trip, this annual trip up to this cabin, it was always me, Wolf, Nick, and then Nick's mom and dad. And they were like this perfect couple, you know, they loved each other so much. They were so much fun to be around, just like the most motherly, fatherly group. And they loved that cabin, especially the dad. The dad, I don't think he built it, but he was like always, you know, he was very handy fixing it up, you know, he's a man's man rugged guy.

• 1:25:08Speaker 05

  And so when, when I found out that Nick's dad had died, you know, I really didn't care about the ski trip, snowboard trip. I'm like, of course we're not doing that, you know, how could we, it was like literally a couple of days away, you know, there's not a chance we're going to do that. I remember I talked to Wolf separately, so not the guy whose dad died. And I said, hey, you know, just between you and I, obviously we're not going to go, you know, right? And he's like, yeah, no way.

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  But I ended up getting a call from Nick. And Nick is, he was always like a very stoic guy, sort of like a tough, quiet, reserved kind of guy. And he's like, hey, like showing almost no emotion or anything. He's like, hey, you know, we're just, we're just gonna go, we're gonna go on the trip anyways. And I remember thinking that I actually really didn't want to, because like, I'm thinking about how uncomfortable that's gonna be. The absence of his father is gonna be so obvious. But I, I also was thinking that, you know, for all I know, this is their way of like, you know, sort of honoring his late fathers. He loved the cabin. And maybe it's one of those things where it's like, he would want us to go, you know, still do the trip.

• 1:26:18Speaker 05

  And so I called Wolf separately, and he sort of agreed that he's like, I feel like it's our responsibility to go and be supportive and just let this be whatever it is. You know, it's not meant to be a fun vacation. It's meant to be, be there for the family and just go. And so me and Wolf agreed to go with Nick. And the deal is, it's gonna be the three of us, the three friends, Nick's mom, like usual. And then she had two much older sons. They were in their 30s at the time, we're 16. I hadn't met them before. I knew they existed, but you know, the rumor was that they would be joining us at the cabin, presumably the night we got there. We were gonna be there for three nights. They were gonna join us. And so without even telling Wolf or I, we sort of understood

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  that they're going there to sort of fill the obvious gap left, left behind by Nick's dad's absence. And so that's sort of what we, what we think we're walking into. And so we, the day comes, a couple, it's just a couple of days later, you know, Nick's, Nick's mom comes, picks me up, and it's me, Wolf, and Nick in the backseat. It's a big SUV. And, you know, Nick's mom is driving and the, the front passenger seat is, you know, conspicuously empty. That's where the dad would sit. And so, you know, up to New Hampshire we go. And, you know, at this point, I am, I've embraced the situation and I'm just looking to be a good friend. So was Wolf. We just go up there. It is what it is.

• 1:27:41Speaker 05

  So we go up to the cabin and a couple more points about the cabin that are sort of important for the story is the cabin itself is situated on a mountain. It's built on a mountain. If you think about how you'd build a level house on a slope, you gotta sort of put half the house, if you will, out on stilts to keep it up supported and then the other half is sort of effectively built into the mountain, you know, to build something on a slope. I guess, I hope that makes sense. And so that's how this one's built. Basically, half the house was sort of jutting off the mountain with big stilts and a big wraparound porch that's that went around the outside and then sort of like a section of the house was sort of burrowed into the mountain. And when you drive up this mountain, you'd turn onto a little access road and you'd be

• 1:28:23Speaker 05

  approaching the house, sort of looking at it from a profile view. You'd see on the left side is the stilted side and the right side is the side buried in the mountain. The door is right in front of you as you pull up to it. The door to get into the cabin, you actually have to step onto the wraparound porch and take a few steps. And then there's a door that leads directly into the side of the cabin. And once you step inside, you're standing quite literally between the kitchen on your right, where there's linoleum under your right foot, and on your left is this shag carpet where the dining room is. So you step in and you're straddling these two rooms. There's also sleigh bells that they kept on the door. So anytime you opened it, you could always hear it opening. And so you walk into the

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  cabin and there's just like one big open room. It's all open floor plans of very small cabin. So kitchen over here, dining room here with a table in it. And if you just kept walking straight towards the back of this cabin, again, not very big, you'd enter the living room. There's no wall demarcating it. You just sort of get to a couch with a TV on the back of the cabin. And if you turned around in that back of the cabin and looked up, you'd see a lofted second floor. And basically at the backside of the cabin, there's stairs that go up to the second floor. So it's just a lofted second floor. That's where the mom and dad, that's where they would sleep. And then where we would sleep is when you first walk in.

• 1:29:43Speaker 05

  And you got the kitchen on your right, you got the dining room on your left. If you walk like halfway through the cabin and you stopped and you turn right, you're now looking into the mountain that direction. There's a single hallway that goes straight down and then makes this tiny little left. And there's one bedroom that is where we would sleep. And when you go into that bedroom, you'd walk in, it's a corner fed room, if you will, for our military days. And immediately on your right is a bunk bed. I would sleep on the lower bunk, Wolf would sleep on the top bunk. And then with basically all the remaining space in the room, it's not a very big room, was like a queen sized bed where Nick would sleep. And there was just enough space where you could walk between the queen size and the bunk bed, a little, little row there.

• 1:30:27Speaker 05

  So all that will make sense once we get into the story or the what really happens. So anyways, we get up to the mountain, we get to the cabin, we put our stuff down and right away, you know, even though it's midday, we head out to Aditash, I think that's the name of the mountain we went to and we snowboard all day and it's, it's, it's great. You know, it's even though it's a sad trip, it was wonderful to be out on the mountain. And then we, we come back and at this point, we were told that the brother, one of, one of the two older brothers was likely going to be there late at night. He was coming in from some trip he had. And so basically he was going to get there, but it was going to be late at night, likely after we fell asleep. So there's no reason to stay up for him.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  And so we, we were at the cabin and the three of us are like, man, let's just like go to bed right now. It's like seven or eight o'clock. Let's just go to bed. And we can get up super early and like hit the mountain and snowboard all day tomorrow. It's going to be awesome. And so we go in our bedroom and the other two fall asleep like immediately, but I just like can't sleep. There's no reason for it. Just couldn't sleep. Maybe I was excited. And I had like a PlayStation one in there and I was playing like SSX Tricky, that little snowboarding game. Just crushing video games. I just couldn't sleep. But finally I'm like, all right, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta go to bed. So I turn it off. And I get into the bunk and it's It's truly pitch black inside this room. The room has, it's been built into the mountain.

• 1:31:53Speaker 05

  You know, that's, it's, it's not some secret room. It's just the way that the cabin is constructed. There's no windows. You know, it's, it's, it's bunkered in the mountain. And so there's no light coming in and it's the middle of the night. And the only light in the room was just a digital clock that had a little red dial to a little red digital face. That was the only light in the room. Um, but it's like truly like a pitch black room. And so I'm laying there and I still can't sleep and my feet are closest to the door. And Wolf is the same orientation above me and Nick is the same orientation next to me. And I'm laying there and at a certain point I hear footsteps out on the wraparound porch. And I didn't hear a car approach.

• 1:32:37Speaker 05

  Um, I also wasn't like actively listening for sounds outside. I was trying to fall asleep, but I just, I remember hearing these footsteps on the wraparound porch. And, um, you know, I, I think that I mentioned it before in another story. I, it's amazing what your brain will do. I've seen this in this particular story and I've also seen it, you know, in the military where you're met with like overwhelming evidence that something bad is happening, but your brain is like, nope, everything is fine. And like, it's the middle of the night on a mountain and I'm hearing footsteps on the wraparound porch. And so my brain immediately jumps to, oh, it's Nick's brother. Has to be Nick's brother. It's like two, three in the morning right now.

• 1:33:22Speaker 05

  We knew he was going to be here. I've never met him and, and it's funny, my, my go-to thought was, uh, I'm going to pretend to be asleep because I'm not, I don't want to have a social interaction with this dude right now. Never met him before. It's like three in the morning. I was going to walk in and be like, yo, get up, let's, let's chat, let's meet, you know? Like, he's not going to do that. But that's all I'm thinking. I'm like, all right, just do your best, like a sleep impression. And so I'm, I'm sitting there and I hear these, these footsteps and they're, they're out on the porch, which is elevated off the grounds. It's pretty echoey and it's like silent in the house beyond that. And so the footsteps, they stop outside the door, the door that leads into the, the kitchen and the living room. And I hear the door open and I can hear the sound of the sleigh bells on the door ringing. So makes sense.

• 1:34:07Speaker 05

  The door is opening. He's here. And the the first thing that I noticed that seemed off was I didn't hear the door shut again. I just heard it open. And the footsteps, when they're out on the wraparound porch, that is an elevated wooden platform. Makes sense that they would like echo in a sense, or that you would hear them. The cabin is not echoey. There's shag carpet and it's like cement slab. It's you don't hear people's footsteps. But when the footsteps came into the cabin, I continued to hear them like they were echoing, almost like they were out on the wraparound porch. And so footsteps wraparound porch, the door opens, the sleigh bells, the footsteps come into

• 1:34:49Speaker 05

  the cabin and they're like echoing through echo is not even the right word. They're loud, like I can hear like a thump with each step.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  And I'm telling myself it has to be one of next brothers. That's all that's all it can be. There's no other explanation here because any alternative is awful. There's no other good alternative. And so the footsteps are moving and I and I had this weird thought that I can only describe this way. It was almost like I could see in my mind's eye where they were in the house. Whoever, whatever this was, it was like I was intimately aware, probably because I was having like a fight or flight reaction and my my brain was going crazy. It was like with every step, it was like I could see the feet like moving exactly where they were in the cabin. And I could tell as the footsteps, you know, hard stomped through the cabin, they stopped. And I knew they were stopping right at the point where you would turn and you would,

• 1:35:42Speaker 05

  if you wanted to, you'd walk down the hallway that led to us. There's no other, once you'd come down this hallway, we're the only room that's left. Right? And so I'm picturing in my mind like, okay, this has got to be an ex brother. But like, what's going on here? Why do I have this weird thought about this? The footsteps stop at that point and they turn and they begin walking down the hallway towards our room. Our our door shut. It's pitch dark beyond the the little red light in the room. And I, at this point, I'm starting to wonder like, okay, I don't know if this could be next brother. This just, this feels awkward. It feels wrong. The door's not shut. Like, what's up with these footsteps being this loud? Is this an intruder? Is it is a, is it a predator? I don't know. Is it an animal that's come into the house?

• 1:36:26Speaker 05

  Like, all these thoughts are going through my head and they're all bad. And I remember having this almost paralyzing fear come over me as the footsteps began coming down the hall. Because all I'm thinking is, in a moment here. Invariably, it seems like the door is gonna open and I'm gonna have to have some sort of interaction with whoever, whatever this is. Wolf and Nick are dead asleep and I'm so scared with fear, I can't make a sound, I'm so scared, I'm so scared. And so I'm laying there and the footsteps come down the hallway and then they stop right outside the door. So it comes down the hallway and it turns and it's facing the doorway that's shut. And I'm looking towards the foot of my bed, the bunk bed now, and there's a space between the top bunk and where I'm laying. And so I have a little bit of a view on this door that's on the wall here.

• 1:37:09Speaker 05

  I can see the door and the door opens inwardly. And it's so dark, but like my mind, I'm like, I know where the door is. I know like, even though I can't see it, I know if anybody comes in, they're gonna be right there. And so I'm laying here staring down through the slat in my bunk bed. The door opens and this dark, tall figure walks into the room. And each step is like this thunderous boom as it's walking into the room, like it's echoing through the whole house, it feels like. Like I'm amazed no one else is woken up to it. And I see it walk past, and I'm gonna explain this, I see it walk past the slats in the bed, or that space in the bed, and the room is like pitch black. There's really no light coming in, even when the door opened up.

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  There's a tiny bit of light from the digital clock, but there's virtually no light. And I could practically perfectly make out a dark silhouette within a dark room. It was like I could see it, clear as day, as if there was a light being shown on it, this tall, dark figure that walks past the bed. And I'm laying here and my view is partially obscured by the top bunk over here. Like I can see Nick on the bed there, I can basically see the whole room, but if you're standing real close to the bed and you were to walk down the row and you were taller than the top bunk, let's say, I couldn't actually see you unless I moved my head and looked up at you, right? So I'm laying here and this thing walks into the room, it turns at the foot of the bed,

• 1:38:33Speaker 05

  and it begins marching down the space between where I'm laying and where Nick is laying. And it's so tall that from my perspective, I can only like see its thighs, if you will, like its hips would be above the top bunk. Like it doesn't feel physically possible that it's so tall. And it marches right next to me and it stops. And I'm laying there sweating bullets, I honestly don't think I've been more scared in my life. I don't think I've ever been more scared. And I'm, all I remember thinking, I said it in the YouTube video that I told it, it became like a meme within my community of fans. I was like, very earnestly, I was like, all I could think was, please God, whatever or whoever you are, don't bend down here and look at me.

• 1:39:18Speaker 05

  Cause it'll ruin my life to like have to interact with you.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  But I'm laying there, all I'm thinking is, oh my God, like, don't interact with me. Don't like, I know this is not Nick's brother. I don't know who or what this is. But it like turned away from me, almost like a military facing movement, cause it had marched down the way and it turned away from me. Now it's looking out over Nick's bed. I'm frozen, like paralyzed. I was helpless. He could have destroyed me. I couldn't do anything. And it like bowed forward into Nick. It like bent forward into Nick and then disappeared into the ground. Just was gone. And, uh, you know, in a movie, let's say, I think you might be like, oh, now it's safe. The ghost melted into the floor. We can, we can run away now. Good, everybody.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  Right. But like in real life, I'm like, where did it go? Where is it? That's not how, that's not normal. You know, there's so many questions, like, what do I do now? And so I'm laying in bed, wondering if it's gonna like poke its head up and look at me. And again, it's like, this is horrible, horrible thing. And so I just laid there in bed, waiting for whatever or whoever this was to reemerge. And I didn't move and I'm like frozen solid, just so scared. And at a certain point, when nothing happened in the room, I must have fallen asleep. That's the only explanation, cause it's like this gray area post seeing it to when I wake up. But I basically come to or wake up very shortly after this. I only could have slept for like an hour tops.

• 1:40:50Speaker 05

  And I realized that Nick and Wolf are both up out of the bed. It's just me. There's a little bit of light in there and I can hear out in the kitchen, the sound of Nick's mom like doing her morning routine. And I'm so relieved, like there's, the room is safe again. I'm up out of the bed. And I go running, I'm sorry, Nick and Wolf, they're still in the bed, they're still in their bedroom, but I can hear Nick's mom. That's actually important. So I wake up, I hear Nick's mom, Nick and Wolf are still in bed. I know it's, it's safe now. I pop out of bed and I run into the kitchen or I go into the kitchen and I'm about to like tell her, I had all these questions, you know, I wanted to say to her, I mean, I'm 16, I'm a kid, you know, I need some reassurance from an adult. But I instantly was like, wait a minute.

• 1:41:33Speaker 05

  She has just lost her husband like a couple of days ago. And I am going to come dangerously close to like, potentially having a sort of offensive conversation if I start being like, "Oh, I think I saw a ghost last night in my room. Who do you think it is?" You know what I mean? So I just was like, how do I approach this?

• 1:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  How old are you?

• 1:41:52Speaker 05

  I was 16. But I was like, oh, I have the perfect thing to ask.

• 1:42:02Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:44:44Speaker 05

  So I go in the kitchen and I'm like shaken up because I know this happened. This was not like some fleeting dream, like something happened. And I say to her, I'm like, hey, uh, and she's making coffee, doing her thing. And I'm like, hey, did, did your sons, your older sons, did one of them show up last night?

• 1:45:02Speaker 05

  And she sort of looked at me and she just didn't say anything. And I'm like, were they here? Did they stop by at any point? And she goes, no. And I just, I clearly had a reaction to that. She could see a reaction from me. I was like let down. Like that was my one silver bullet. Maybe that was Nick's brother being really weird last night, you know? And she looks at me and she's like, John, it's okay.

• 1:45:28Speaker 05

  It was just my husband. I heard him last night too.

• 1:45:33Speaker 05

  And I gotta tell you, that was not a reassuring thing to hear from a parent. I, it caught me so flat-footed. Because it's like, I haven't even, I came out there looking like shit. I came out there looking like I had seen a ghost. I clearly was probing about something that happened last night. I'm asking, I'm doubling down on, was your son here? She, she just sort of said it. And I, I didn't even know what to do. And so I just was like, I can't talk to her. I can't, I don't want to talk to her about this. I don't even know what to say or do. I'm just gonna sit down. I began like drinking like 10 cups of coffee, just like doing anything to take my mind off this. And then not long after Wolf and Nick came out of the bedroom.

• 1:46:18Speaker 05

  And they came over and Nick's doing his own thing and I pulled Wolf aside. And I just told him outright. I was like, dude, this what happened last night? And he's like, fuck dude, like, I don't know what to tell you. That's horrifying. Sucks dude, like, I don't know what to tell you, you know? But I told him and I'm like, I'm telling you, I don't, I don't know what to make of it. And I said, that's what Nick's mom said. Like she, I think she's referencing whatever happened to me. And he was like freaked out by it, but he's also like, I don't know, man. Like, there's gotta be an explanation here, you know? And so I sort of took the stance of this is something I'm not gonna understand and I'm just gonna act like everything's normal. Let's just have a normal day of snowboarding and assume that this is okay. Somehow or another, this is okay.

• 1:47:01Speaker 05

  And so we do our morning routine. We, we go snowboarding for the day and pretty quickly, once I'm out of the cabin and we're snowboarding, like it was like, it all evaporated from my mind. I forgot about it. Had a great day of riding, you know, and then at the end of the night, when it was time to come home, the one thing I did do is I said to Nick and Wolf, I'm like, hey, uh, tonight, when we're back there, because we have two more nights at this cabin. I'm like, can you guys just like, let me fall asleep first before you?

• 1:47:30Speaker 05

  Let me enter the slumber realm ahead of you. And they're like, oh yeah, definitely. We'll definitely do that for you. And so we get back to the cabin and I checked in with Nick's mom. I said, hey, tonight we're expecting your, your sons or one of them. And she's like, yeah, they're probably going to be here tonight. And I'm like, okay, these elusive brothers, I guess they're going to be here tonight. And so I'm in bed at like seven, I'm in my bed. I barely slept the night before and I'm like, just trying to go to bed. And I remember the one thing that I did that made it feel like more real as I, I put a, in the springs underneath the bed above me, I put a knife like slotted into the, the springs, you know, to protect myself, but I'm like, nothing's gonna happen. I'm fine.

• 1:48:14Speaker 05

  And so I lay there in bed and I cannot fall asleep because I'm doing that whole like, oh my God, I need to fall asleep before them. Like I can't be awake. And so it was impossible to sleep. And eventually, you know, Nick and Wolf are like, dude, we're going to bed. It's like midnight. We're going to bed. We're not just gonna sit here until you do. And I'm like, fine. I'm like kicking their bed and like trying to keep them up, but eventually they fell asleep. And once again, I am, I am alone in the room, wide awake. It's dark. With a knife? Oh, I have my stupid knife right above me. And I'm laying there and time is just going by. And at some point, maybe two, three in the morning, I remember hearing the sound of the steps out on the wraparound porch. And it was the same, it was like.

• 1:48:58Speaker 05

  It happened again? I'm laying there and I hear the sound on the wraparound porch. And because I've now had one experience, the first night, this feels the same. And it, it just, it defies everything we think we understand about how the way, the way the world works, the way things work. And I was just instantly in that paralysis state that like so scared I can't move. Like I'm dead. And I'm looking up at this fucking knife that I can't even move my arm to get, you know? And I'm laying there and I hear the footsteps on the porch. I hear the door. It opens the sleigh bells. One other thing that I failed to mention in the first

• 1:49:41Speaker 05

  night is another thing is as soon as the door opened and there were sleigh bells, I also heard a pot fall to the linoleum floor. That was the first night that did happen. It happened again second night. So it's like a mirror image. It's the same thing happening two nights in a row, like exactly the same. And then I hear these loud footsteps as, you know, this thing I can like see it in my mind's eye is like walking through the house, the cabin. It stops, it turns and begins walking down the hallway towards our room and it's the same as the night before. I know it's not one of Nick's brothers. Like this is an intruder. Like I don't know what this is and I'm horrified. The door opens up and again, it's this tall figure that walks into the room. I, I see it's like hips,

• 1:50:22Speaker 05

  if you will, like through the slot of the bed above me and mine. It's so tall. Like I can't see it. It marches past me next to the bed. And then again, same as the night before, you know, I'm praying it doesn't look at me and ruin my life. It turns away from me and bows into Nick and, and vanishes. And so it's, it's really the same thing in a row, the same thing two nights in a row and not comforting. Like worse. It only made it more real that it had happened again. And I'm still laying there wondering where it went. It isn't like, oh, don't worry. Yesterday it vanished. It'll vanish today. You know, like it was the same. It was, it was like replay and I again, laid there, could barely sleep.

• 1:51:03Speaker 05

  Eventually out of sheer exhaustion from snowboarding all day, barely sleeping. I did fall asleep. And then I woke up at a certain point and again, I hear Nick's mom out in the kitchen. This time that morning when I got out of bed and went in there, I, I didn't care at all about being offensive. Didn't care in the least. I walked out there and I was like hysterical, like I, I don't even know what to say to you. Like, please tell me your sons were here. And like, I just tell her everything and the whole time she's, she's looking at me and she's, she's a wonderful woman. She's so like motherly, so nice. She's just like, I can almost feel like she felt bad for me or something. Like she's listening to me. She's not dismissing me, but she was just letting me do my cathartic, like ranting about how terrified I am and what the fuck's

• 1:51:48Speaker 05

  going on here. I want to leave. And at the end of it, she's just like, John, it's, it's really okay. It's just my husband. I heard him here last night. I heard him here the night before. It's fine. Like, that's what I'm hearing from the adult in the house. And it was just like, this, this is not all right. And, and I remember on that morning, we have one more night at this house still, and it gets worse, actually. Somehow it gets worse. Um, I was like, I want to go home. I just want to fucking go home. I don't want to be here. But this is a trip that I have looked forward. I look for, this is like the one big trip. Like, my family didn't have a lot of money or anything. This was like a big deal to get to go do this big trip.

• 1:52:30Speaker 05

  This was awesome. And it was like all I talked about. And so the idea that I'd be calling my folks up, like, yo, drive to New Hampshire, pick me up and bring me home because I'm seeing ghosts in the cabin. There's a fucking ghost. It just felt like two, and then it also, it, it, it was like, I don't know how this will be interpreted long term. You know, am I being totally insensitive to the fact that I went here to support the family who's lost their dad? And I'm claiming a ghost scared me off. It just, it was a lot. And I, I grappled with it. And I, I remember I talked openly to everybody, to the mom, to, to Nick, to Wolf. I'm like, I'm just, I'm just gonna stay. Like, I was like openly saying that I wanted to get the fuck out of here, but I'm, I'll just stay. It's one more night.

• 1:53:10Speaker 05

  I'll stay with you guys. It is what it is. It was a weird morning. It was so weird because she's like, almost reassured to hear me confirming what she thinks she's hearing. I don't even know. It was like good for her. She wanted to talk about this and I didn't want to talk about it. And Nick, the son of the deceased, he, he's like totally doesn't want to hear any of it. And Wolf is like, very scared now. He's like getting worked up by, it was just a very weird thing. But anyways, we got one more night. And I'm like, God, just gotta get through one more night of this awful experience. And so that day after doing our weird breakfast routine, you know, we, we found out, one, that the brothers were not going to be stopping by after all. Turns out, you know, didn't really matter, but they were not going to be stopping by.

• 1:53:53Speaker 05

  So that night, the one more night I had, I didn't even have like a, a thing to cling on to that could be the reason behind these sounds. But before his mom, Nick's mom drove us to the mountain that day, we made a very small pit stop at this woodworking shop that was near the cabin. They were picking, she was picking up a new coffee table that they were going to place in the cabin at the foot of the stairs that led up to the second floor of the lofted area. And she just needed me and Nick and Wolf to literally lift it, put it in the Jeep. And so we go to the woodworking shop, we get this new coffee table, this beautiful wood coffee table. We put it in the SUV, we go to the mountain, we do our snowboarding for the day. And I honestly was so checked out, I didn't really care. I just wanted to get time to pass. I just wanted to be done.

• 1:54:39Speaker 05

  We come back from snowboarding, we get picked up. And when we get back to the cabin, Nick's mom had us offload this heavy coffee table and walk it in. And we put it by the foot of the stairs that led to the second floor. And then we went to bed and I again instructed Nick and Wolf like, stay awake, let me sleep. But they didn't, they fell asleep. I'm awake in the room by myself. And I'm just furious. That was how I, anger was the feeling I had. I felt so mad that like, I'm in this position. How can I be in this position? What have I done here?

• 1:55:12Shawn Ryan?

  This is the third night in a row.

• 1:55:13Speaker 05

  This is the worst. And so I'm laying there and sure enough, it's like three in the morning. And I hear those fucking steps on the wraparound porch. And it's like, I'm losing my mind. Like, I don't even know, there's no way to react to this. This is awful. And so I'm terrified. I'm looking at my stupid knife and the door. It opens, I hear the sleigh bells, the pot falls, the linoleum, it's the third night in a row. This is like crazy. The footsteps come into the cabin. But this night, something new happens. When the footsteps reached that point where they would turn and come down the hallway to where our bedroom was, instead of that, they kept walking to the very back of the first floor of the cabin. And again, it's almost like in my mind's eye, I could like see exactly where they were moving in the house

• 1:55:58Speaker 05

  based on how loud the thumbs were or whatever. And it was really actually surprisingly way more terrifying when I, when I, when I figured it out or when I could sense here that this thing was not going to be following the pattern. You know, as awful as the pattern was, come into the room, bow into Nick, and I'm terrified all night. I didn't die at the end of it, like, things were contained. But now it's like something new is happening. And it suddenly was like, this thing has the capacity to like sink into the ground. Like, what's going on here? And so the footsteps go past that turn point and it goes to the very back of the first floor. And there's a pause. And then I hear the footsteps going up the stairs to the second floor where Nick's mom is.

• 1:56:41Speaker 05

  And so I hear the footsteps and it's like basically right above us. And at a certain point, the footsteps just stopped. And I spent the rest of the night laying there, looking up at the bunk above me, waiting for this entity to float through the ceiling and like come down to me. Shit. Bowed into the ground the day before. So it's, it's like all night, I'm just laying there so scared. This is the worst night of the three, you know, I didn't hear any more sounds after that. At a certain point, I must have dozed off again because it's like I'm on fumes at this point. I wake up, it's super early, you know, earlier than the past two mornings I had gotten up. It's probably like four in the morning. And Nick and Wolf are still asleep in their bed.

• 1:57:23Speaker 05

  It's still pretty dark, but I can hear something out in the living space. And it sounded like Nick's mom and it sounded like she was crying. Frankly, didn't fucking care, just wanted to leave. Got out of bed and I went out there and it was like, I'm not even looking for explanations. I'm not looking to talk about this. I can just be done. I can go out here and we can just leave. And I go out of the hallway and I look over to the kitchen where I expect her to be. And she's not there. She's over on the stairs, like leading up to the second floor. And she's definitely crying and I look over at her and before I can ask anything, she just goes, John, come here. And she's standing over that coffee table that we had put at the foot of the stairs the day before.

• 1:58:06Speaker 05

  And I walk over to her and she's crying and I sense that she's not crying tears of sadness. She's, she's, she's happy. She, these are happy tears. And I'm getting ready to ask questions here, but she just stops me and points at the surface of the coffee table. And I look at the, the coffee table and etched into the wood is the words, I love you. And she goes, I didn't write that. Holy shit, dude. What? And, and so I will say, the conclusion to this story is, this ended my relationship with everybody in the story. I didn't, this is it. That's the end of the relationship with these people. This was so traumatic for me. It was like, well, I'll just never talk to any of you again.

• 1:58:51Speaker 05

  Holy shit, dude. And I'm thinking, like, think of the, the, the, the answers for what could have happened range, pretty much. That's like, okay, let's, let's go through the, the exercise of perhaps Nick's mom, in, in the state of grief that she is in, somehow picked up on that I had had some sort of nightmare, or whatever, and took it upon herself to pretend that she too had like seen a ghost or something, right? Mm-hmm. Why would you do that to me? One would be a question, but two, like, I didn't give up that I saw anything on that first morning. It isn't like I walked out and said, hey, last night I heard somebody walking around the cabin. Was it your son? I tried to ask

• 1:59:36Speaker 05

  as like diplomatically, I'm sure I had a look, I'm sure looked scared. How could she have possibly thought, oh, I know what this is. He must have had a thought that of somebody was walking around the cabin last night. I'm going to capitalize on that and pretend that it's my husband. And it was so immediate that she agreed with me and said, that was my husband and it's okay. It's just, it doesn't mean it's not possible. In fact, if there's any rational explanation, it's that she, out of grief and sadness, did this to make it feel like her husband was still around. But even that, like, I don't know. I don't know if you could do it that quickly and that well. It's possible. It's certainly possible. But then it's like, what's the alternative? Man.

• 2:00:18Speaker 05

  It wasn't me. Certainly wasn't me. And I, and I'm the guy that sleepwalks. I'm the guy that has all the reason in the world to say, oh, no, like, there's probably, this was, this was my mind. This was, but it's, it's not. It was corroborated. That is wild. You've never spoken to them again?

• 2:00:39Speaker 05

  Wolf a little bit, Nick zero, his mom zero. I mean, the little bit is about the fact that I've told this story.

• 2:00:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Holy shit.

• 2:00:49Speaker 05

  And it's funny, like, the reason we cut ties, or I did, it wasn't malice. It was like, dude, we can't get over this.

• 2:00:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Speaker 05

  This is not something I'm gonna get over.

• 2:01:00Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, we've had some stuff happen.

• 2:01:03Speaker 05

  Yeah?

• 2:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we had, uh, Tim, who's on behind one of these cameras here. He was there for it. Elijah, he was, he was, he's upstairs. He was up, he was there for it. We, so before I did the podcast thing, I was like, basically throwing shit at the wall to see what's stuck, because I was so tired of tactics. And, uh, I was just done with it. And so I was, one of my ideas was, uh, oh, I know, we're gonna do like this reality TV survival scenario series or whatever, right? So, first one I did was, uh, Tim was, Tim was there. Like I said, Elijah was there. Tim was one of the contestants. We, it was like, hey, you got 50 bucks

• 2:01:47Shawn Ryan?

  or a hundred bucks or something. End of the world's happening. We're going to Bass Pro. And you have to buy everything, you know, that you would need to, to survive on a time limit. So

• 2:02:01Shawn Ryan?

  we rented this cabin, this old like Civil War cabin out in this area called College Grove. It's like 20, 30 minutes from here. And, but you know, this is, you know, Franklin, you know, this area, this is front lines Civil War. There's a lot, yeah, yeah, lots of Confederate Union cemeteries around, lots of buildings where, you know, that were, that were shot up, blood stains on the floor, lots of ghost stuff around here. There's ghost, ghost tours all over town. Anyways, we go to this old cabin, little bit of a backstory. So

• 2:02:40Shawn Ryan?

  It took my wife and I like over a year to find a place to live here. And when we were moving up from Florida, we just kept getting outbid by Californians. This is like the big migration. Oh, really? And we just couldn't afford it. And so um, I looked, I looked at my wife and I was like, I'm getting tired of putting in offers on houses and getting outbid like just the shit's getting depressing. This is our seventh trip up here. Let's just go get a cabin out in the woods, enjoy the, you know, enjoy Tennessee for the, you know, for the rest of the this trip and then we'll go and find some place to move in Florida. That's, that's out of the city. So we go to this cabin.

• 2:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  Run it's awesome. It's out in the middle of nowhere. It's in this, you know, cow pasture, like out in the rolling hills.

• 2:03:33Shawn Ryan?

  Family owns it. It's an Airbnb. Family owns it. That's, it's, that's, that's, you know, who knows? The, the farm has been in their family for generations. I'm like, this is pretty fucking cool. It's like one of those old school log homes, you know? And um, I woke up and I kept like, I woke up in the middle of the night and I just kept hearing this banging on the roof. And I'm like, well, you know, wake Katie up and I'm like, what is that?

• 2:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing. She didn't hear anything. She's like, maybe, maybe it was a squirrel. I'm like, no, there's no squirrel that makes this sound on the roof. And um, and I'm like, all right, well, whatever. Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe I had a, maybe I had a dream or something, but who knows? So I don't, I don't really think much of it. Fast forward a couple of years, we're out there for this event, you know, we're doing though, we're doing the survival series. And so we do the, we set up this cabin and we put, you know, the vigilance lead sign up and for some branding. And we're getting it ready to shoot the debrief because we're going to grab all the shit from Bass Pro, come back. They're going to present it. I'm going to grade the two consistence. And we're like trying to plug in the sign and we're plugging in these lamps and trying to build this, you know, kind of a set.

• 2:04:45Shawn Ryan?

  And none of the electricals making sense, but it, it doesn't hit me. I'm like, that's weird. I plugged the sign in here. Doesn't work. Plug the lamp in, does work. Plug the sign in over there. It does, you know, and it'd be just weird electrical shit going on. But I don't really think anything of it. So we go out.

• 2:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  Go to Bass Pro, Bass Pro's probably an hour away. We do the exercise, come back. They're presenting all this stuff, like all the stuff that they bought with the budget. And we'd only rented the Airbnb for,

• 2:05:20Shawn Ryan?

  for uh, what it was like, for the day. And um, we're in the middle of this debrief. We're supposed to be out by 6pm. And I'm, I'm like, I'm facing the window, very, a similar cabin, sounds like, very similar to what you were in. Everything, it's one big room, right? Kitchen's in the room, dining room's in the room, TV, fireplace. And then there's a spiral staircase that goes up to a loft. But the loft isn't enclosed, you know, you can lean over the,

• 2:05:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:05:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and see downstairs. So it's all one big room minus the bathroom. We have this little table set up.

• 2:06:01Shawn Ryan?

  And we start hearing footsteps. And I thought the footsteps were, were outside. This shit's on camera.

• 2:06:10Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 2:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  We're filming this stuff. That's, yeah. There's a video up on our channel that shows this. And um, so you see me in the debrief and these guys are talking. And you just see my face all of a sudden and I, I like go like this. And I'm looking out the front door, but I see my, I, I thought I saw somebody else's reflection. But it's, it wound up being mine while I'm hearing

• 2:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  footsteps. And you just see my face go like, what the fuck? And then I, and then the reflection turns into my reflection. But on the camera, so the footsteps were upstairs. I thought it was the, was the porch. You know, it was a wooden porch out there. It's past 6. I figure this is probably, you know, the, the, the owners coming to say like, hey, guys, we got a wedding coming up tomorrow. You gotta get the hell out of here.

• 2:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my god. We pull the camera footage. And well, first, like, then I look up. All three of us that are on camera all look up at the exact same time. And you hear these fucking footsteps. And, and I like, I look at Tim and Adam and I'm like, "Did you guys just fucking hear that?" My wife was there. Elijah was there behind the camera. We had a marketer there that was behind. Every single person in the room is looking up going, "What the fuck was that?" We packed the shit up. I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here." Like, right now. "Fuck this, we're not even gonna finish. Get out of here."

• 2:07:56Shawn Ryan?

  So we load up all the camera shit, load up the microphones, put the furniture back. I can't even remember. Did we go upstairs and even look? I had to go upstairs to get one of the lights. He goes, "Yeah." So we pack all this shit up. Dude, I did not even wanna look at the cabin. Cause there's a, there's on the top in the loft, which is where like the bedroom is, where me and my wife were sleeping when I heard the banging on the roof. There's a little window and you have to close this gate. I'm like, "I'm not, I'm not even fucking looking in that damn window. I don't wanna, I don't give a shit. I have guns. It's not gonna kill whatever's up there."

• 2:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  So we, so we haul, hightail it back to my house. Immediately pull the footage. I'm like, "Pull the footage. Let's see what that shit was." On the footage, if I remember correctly, you do not hear the footsteps. Do you remember this? Do you hear the footsteps? We have it, we'll pull it. I'm gonna have a question. So I'm gonna have both of you step outside. I'm gonna bring each one of you in.

• 2:09:16Speaker 05

  And this fucking place is haunted as fuck.

• 2:09:18Shawn Ryan?

  Every time there's a footstep, you can hear the static in the camera. So it'll be like, God.

• 2:09:28Shawn Ryan?

  I call my best friend. We're like, we're all blown away. We're like, holy shit, there's a fucking ghost in there. And I call my best friend later that night and I'm like, hey,

• 2:09:41Shawn Ryan?

  John, check this shit out. Listen to this. What do you think of this? I tell him the whole story. He goes, pull up. He goes, look, pull up the Airbnb. Pull it up right now and just see what the reviews say. And I'm like, oh, great idea. We pull up the fucking reviews, dude. And it is, don't bang on the walls. They bang back. Don't show up after dark. Because the entire place comes alive. It was just review after review after review of people's haunted stories in that cabin. Haven't been back there since.

• 2:10:16Speaker 05

  Holy shit, dude.

• 2:10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck that. Like,

• 2:10:18Speaker 05

  Dude, that's crazy.

• 2:10:20Shawn Ryan?

  I know. I could have swore I told you this. I may have told you this in the last episode. Cause I was like, we should do John's episode at that fucking cabin. When you, when you came here, but dude, yeah.

• 2:10:34Speaker 05

  The fact that there were those reviews, that's crazy.

• 2:10:37Shawn Ryan?

  It's wild, dude. I was, I will, well, when this come, we'll put, uh, we'll put the footage in, in the episode so you can see it.

• 2:10:44Speaker 05

  Dude, that's nuts. I'd love to see that.

• 2:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but I believe in paranormal stuff. It scares the shit out of me still today at 43 years old. So.

• 2:10:54Speaker 05

  That, that, see, that, that would be to feel like, oh, maybe it was something, maybe it was this, but then to see the reviews, that, that's what confirms your nightmare.

• 2:11:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:02Speaker 05

  That's the thing.

• 2:11:03Shawn Ryan?

  I got more for you. I'll tell you.

• 2:11:04Speaker 05

  I'd love to hear it.

• 2:11:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'll tell you tonight at the, uh, at the campfire session, but, well, hey, man. I really appreciate all the stories and, uh, it's good to get in the Halloween spirit, you know, a couple of days beforehand. So, thank you.

• 2:11:19Speaker 05

  And thank you for the, the sig, dude. You kidding me?

• 2:11:22Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, let's go, let's go burn it down real quick.

• 2:11:26Speaker 05

  Let's do it. Thanks, bro. This is awesome.

• 2:11:28Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:11:41Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify Podcasts.